WHEN LAST WE LOOKED in on the semifictional universe of Fast Company magazine, all was supposedly wonderful in NASDAQ-land.
"New Economy" companies were going strong (at least by the measure of their stock prices and venture-capital accumulations). "Old Economy" companies were being led to believe their very survival depended on copying the "fast" m.o. of the tech firms, and as quickly as possible.
What a difference a year makes.
Recent FC issues betray a much more desperate "positivity." Their relentless hang-in-there-bud, it's-gonna-be-OK sermonizing has some of the same quaint crudity once found in Depression-era Hearst editorials.
In the mag's current issue, there's a long piece about Seattle's civic leaders trying to make sure the region's recent tech-economy boom leaves a permanent legacy. The very premise of the article implies that the tech-economy boom is a limited-life-span event, whose peak may have already come and gone. FC wouldn't even have let a letter-to-the-editor writer say such a thing 14 months ago.
That alone would be worth the newsstand price of the mag. But even more fascinating is the means by which it claims Seattle will always remember its day in the virtual sun--by erecting culture palaces, designed by "world class" architects, and calling it "arts funding."
The piece's writer, Scott Kirsner, starts by noting the usual suspects of the recent Seattle edifice complex: EMP, the Seattle Art Museum, the dual stadia, Benaroya Hall, the Museum of Flight, the in-the-works sculpture garden, the forthcoming Opera House rebuild and city-call complex.
"There's a seize-the-day spirit at play here," Kirsner writes. "Seattle wants to put its potent economy to work building museums, civic buildings, and public spaces, so that in the likely event that the good times don't last forever, the city will be left with more than just empty buildings."
The problem with that idea, as Kirsner implies toward the end (during an interview with ex-Allied Arts honcho Alex Steffan), is that without a strong local infrastructure of artistic creators and programmers, "empty buildings" could be all we get.
Kirsner gives three big building projects his main attention--the Museum of History and Industry's plan to move into part of the Convention Center expansion; Rem Koolhaas's new downtown library; and the just-opened new Bellevue Art Museum. He doesn't mention that the first two projects are related. While the old library (a rapidly-decaying piece of '50s jet-age "efficiency") is destroyed and the new one put up at the same site, a temporary library will operate out of the Convention Center space slotted for MOHAI.
This is actually to MOHAI's favor, as it gives the organization three years to raise money and community interest in putting together a bigger, more elaborate, and more enticing local-history museum than current, modest li'l artifact display near the Arboretum.
From all accounts, it's been slow going thus far. The megabucks donors behind the "world class" secular cathedrals have been relatively disinterested in a project so historical and so darned local--especially a project that'll be just a part of a much larger building complex, and thus provide no employment opportunities for glamorous NYC architects.
NEXT: Don't let 'em "restore" the Rendezvous too much.
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