George Nelson Associates, Inc. partnered with most of the modernist designers of the time. This was both the result of Nelson's time as a magazine editor, and because of Nelson's writing. His skill as a writer helped legitimize and stimulate the field of industrial design by contributing to the creation of Industrial Design magazine in 1953. Nelson wrote extensively, published several books, and organized conferences like the Aspen design gatherings, where for more than 30 years he was the guiding force. In 1971, he received a grant from the Graham Foundation for his project "Hidden Cities". One of George Nelson's areas of interest was the reduction of pollution. Through his attempts to reduce all forms of pollution, including visual, audio, and chemical, Nelson pioneered the idea of the outdoor shopping mall, first using the idea in a proposal for the city plan of Austin, Texas, which was not used. In 2008, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, held a retrospective of Nelson's work to celebrate his 100th birthday. Design critic Alice Rawsthorn, covering the retrospective for The New York Times, argued that Nelson's contributions have been unfairly overlooked due to his association with the cubicle and jokey 1950s objects. "Blaming Nelson for the soullessness of today's open-plan offices seems as unfair as slating Le Corbusier for other architects' sloppily designed skyscrapers, or Marcel Duchamp for every lazy piece of conceptual art," she wrote. "[Nelson] championed the importance of values in design, which he saw as a catalyst for social change." Attribution In recent years it has become known that many of the designs George Nelson accepted credit for were actually the work of other designers employed at his studios. Examples of this include the Marshmallow sofa, which was actually designed by Irving Harper, and the Action Office, for which Nelson won the prestigious Alcoa Award, neglecting to mention that it was largely designed by Robert Propst. John Pile, a designer who worked for Nelson in the 1950s, commented about this practice; "George's attitude was that it was okay for individual designers to be given credit in trade publications, but for the consumer world, the credit should always be to the firm, not the individual. He didn't always follow through on that policy though." In an interview in Metropolis in 2001, Irving Harper also commented on this practice: "...there always had to be one name associated with the