The Bauhaus in the Age of Frictionless Design

The Institute of Design at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) may be the most direct offspring of the Bauhaus, which was the most influential design school in the world. Founded by former Bauhaus faculty member László Moholy-Nagy in 1937, and later absorbed into IIT (whose architecture school was then led by Mies van der Rohe, himself a former Bauhaus director), the graduate school has had seven-plus decades to marinate in the context of early 20th-century experiments that forged art with industry.

And architecturally, it’s been an exceedingly steady simmer—until now. Mies designed IIT’s campus, including the famous steel-and-glass Crown Hall. The Institute of Design’s new home, the 70,000-square-foot Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, is the campus’s first new academic building—by Mies or anyone else—in 40 years. It represents one of the most pervasive and influential types of architectural space today. The building looks, and functions, like a tech office, with break-out spaces, a communal kitchen, acoustically swaddled furniture, and staircase seating. The Institute of Design shares the $37 million facility with IIT’s entrepreneurship and maker hub.