George Nelson, American industrial designer, birthday 29 May 1908
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, religious building, converted to mosque 29 May 1453
Charles Voysey is another extremely influential individual in
the Arts & Crafts era leading to modern architecture and design. There are clear influences of the Charles
Rene Mackintosh and William Morris in his rejection of academic tradition and
relying on the vernacular to influence design instead. Therefore, his designs were a comfortable
transition for the nouveau-riche emerging middle class as a result of the industrial
revolution, a group for which his designs were highly sought after. Before becoming the “superstar” designer of
his time, he wasn’t exactly the star pupil in college and so he went to work
with the architect George Dewey but when business slowed, Voysey opened his own
firm. A.H. Mackmurdo suggested he
experiment with domestic goods design of wallpaper and fabrics to supplement
his income. A smart idea as it wasn’t
until ten years later that he found success as an architect with the completion
of the tower house at Bedford Park. 
After serendipitously ducking into the architecture building
on the Yale campus during a rainstorm, George Nelson’s career as an architect
and icon of modernist furniture began. As
a writer for the magazine “Pencil Points”, Nelson interviewed and was
introduced to the work of the most prolific architects of the time which
formulated his passion for modernist design and became one of the movement’s
ardent defenders. When the chairman of
Herman Miller Furniture read Nelson and Henry Wright’s book Tomorrow’s House he offered Nelson a job
as director of design despite having no experience designing furniture. In the book, the revolutionary concepts of
the “family room” and “storage wall” were introduced; two ideas that are
commonplace in this day. 
In his time at
Herman Miller he fostered some of the most iconic furniture designers of the 20th
century including the Eames’, Harry Bertoia and Isamu Noguchi. Unfortunately, both Bertoia and Noguchi
expressed regret for their time at Herman Miller and it has come to light that
some of the pieces for which he is most known were in fact designed by others
employed at his studio. Regardless of
the controversies, Nelson created an environment that pushed the boundaries of
what modern life was evolving into and nurtured those around him to adapt with
it as well. This is the quintessential
tenant of modern architecture and design. 
The history of Hagia Sophia (Greek for “Holy Wisdom”) is complicated:
it started off as the Greek Patriarchal Cathedral of Constantinople and has
been converted to a Roman Catholic Church, Imperial Mosque and today it has been
secularize as a museum. To make matters
even more complicated, this building is actually the third building on the
site, two others had been destroyed by rioters.
As an excellent example of Byzantine architecture commissioned by
Emperor Justinian it then became the model for many other Ottoman mosques under
Sultan Mehmed II when he ordered it to be converted into a mosque in an act to establish domination over the
vanquished population, a common practice for any invading conqueror. Due to Islamic traditions on art, most of the
mosaics were plastered over but are today in the process of being restored. This is a fine example of a building’s ability
to survive centuries by adaptive reuse. 
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