Hector Silva

Hector Silva has spent over a decade teaching industrial design at some of the country's top programs, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, Rochester Institute of Technology, Academy of Art University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and DePaul University. His studios are known for a demanding pace and an insistence on intent — every form must justify itself, and students move fluidly between sketchbook, workshop, and strategy. That work earned him IDSA's Young Educator of the Year and a Core77 Award, honors that reflect a career-long conviction that design education and design practice should stay in constant conversation.

That conviction plays out across three ventures. H Design, his independent consultancy, takes on consumer, food, play, and brand-driven object projects that double as a testing ground for what he teaches. Advanced Design, the nonprofit he founded, extends design education beyond the university through workshops and public programs — work that earned him IDSA's Special Achievement Award. And Offsite, the online design school he launched in 2020, reimagines the format entirely: small cohorts, working designers as instructors, and a curriculum paced like real studio practice. Earlier this year, Offsite extended that model with an auxiliary program in Japan, developed with local designers and educators — a first step toward the globally distributed design community Hector sees as its next chapter.