In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.
This website is an archive of the impactful and inspirational work produced by the ID community before that transition.

László Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, treating design as a discipline that was teachable, testable, and consequential. Nine decades on, its scope had widened from the things people use to the systems they depend on: hospitals, government agencies, classrooms, supply chains, digital platforms. Along the way, ID community members developed the published research, methods, and frameworks that designers rely on every day.

Chief among them is human-centered design: close attention to how people actually live, and advocacy for what that research reveals. It shaped designers who are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity: curious, rigorous, inclusive, and stubbornly optimistic about design's ability to change the systems that shape our lives.

To every one of them, who taught, studied, built, critiqued, and stayed late in the studio: thank you, and keep designing.

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The ID Community on the Future of Work

At events at home and abroad, ID faculty and students present perspectives on how our workplaces are changing

By Andrew Connor

October 7, 2021

USA Pavillion

IIT Institute of Design will be featured in the USA Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. Working with the College of Art, Architecture, and Design at the American University of Sharjah, ID will present projects focused on reimagining urban physicality in post-pandemic workspaces.

Two projects created by students working with ID associate professor and director of ID Academy Anijo Mathew will be presented. The first, “Hybrid Socialization in Changing Workplace Boundaries,” analyzes the way relationship dynamics are changing in hybrid virtual and in-person work environments. The second, “Transmutable Places for Post-Pandemic Urban Spaces,” explores customizable and modular urban work environments for hybrid work scenari

“
The projects from IIT Institute of Design and American University of Sharjah will be exhibited at the U.S. Pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai through an innovative virtual portal between Dubai and Chicago. Such long-distance collaboration is unprecedented in the world of design education. We hope it will lead to some amazing ideas and insights for design and innovation in both regions.
—Anijo Mathew, ID Associate Professor

The Dubai expo started October 1, 2021, and will continue through the end of March 2022.

Workplace futures has been a highly discussed topic in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as social distancing measures have upended traditional office practices. Yet even before the pandemic, the future of work has long been an area of expertise for ID faculty and students. Recently, a group of ID graduates, with ID Studio Professor Zach Pino, received recognition from Fast Company’s World Changing Idea awards for the creation of a software that maps areas of inclusivity and exclusion in office floor plans that was started in 2019.

Members of the ID community will also present perspectives on workplace futures on Monday, October 11, as part of careerID Confab. The presenters—Teddy Zmrhal, global vice president of design and innovation at Salesforce, ID Associate Professor Laura Forlano, and ID student Emmanuella Ben-Eboh (MDes + MBA 2022)—will discuss the implications of “the Great Resignation” and today’s remote affordances and requirements.

Related

Inclusion Diagnostic Floor Plan Tool

Return to a More Inclusive Workplace

The Future of Work with Teddy Zmrhal, Laura Forlano, + Emmanuella Ben-Eboh

remoteID research

remoteID: Reimagining Design Education, Online