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 New Bauhaus Now Available to Rent or Purchase

Reviewed on Moholy's birthday by The New York Times and ARTnews

By Kristin Gecan

August 2, 2021

The New Bauhaus film

The documentary film The New Bauhaus, an account of the life and work of László Moholy-Nagy, founder of IIT Institute of Design (ID), is now available on Apple TV, Google Play, and other streaming services.

ARTnews considers Moholy’s contributions:

“
As Alysa Nahmias’s The New Bauhaus convincingly suggests, Moholy-Nagy may actually be most important as an educator. This film gives the artist’s experimental pedagogical practice center stage and shows that, without him, design history—and perhaps art history, too—would not look the same.

Meanwhile, The New York Times calls the film “a good primer” on Moholy, and points out aspects of his visionary thinking that are still very much alive here at ID today:

“
The film argues that Moholy-Nagy was more concerned with approach than product; he had his students learn biology, for instance, seeking to give them new ways of looking at the world. He didn’t separate artistic pursuits from commercial interests or economic realities...he turned the rationing of metal during World War II into an opportunity to rethink products.

Moholy brought the Bauhaus from Germany to Chicago more than 80 years ago.

Earlier this year, in a full circle moment, ID announced its partnership with the New European Bauhaus (NEB) to reignite the Bauhaus vision throughout Europe. The ambitious, interdisciplinary NEB initiative will use systems design and participatory processes—ID’s areas of expertise—to reach the Europe Green Deal goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

We think Moholy would be proud.

Read more about the original film release, and discover an interview with Moholy’s daughter, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, and film director Alysia Nahmias. More information about ID’s early history as The New Bauhaus, including a digital exhibit hosted by Google Arts & Culture, is available here.

More information about the film is available at www.thenewbauhaus.com.

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