Permanent Vacation - Permanent Work

architect Matej Vozlič
project The Linde Office Building, Ljubljana, Slovenia
written by Vera Grimmer

 

For the hero of Jarmusch’s first film, life is a permanent vacation, but this “permanent vacation” is nevertheless an expression of the existential discomfort of a socially maladjusted Manhattan resident. 

 

All the visible and the invisible factors of the Linde building in Ljubljana’s industrial district are devised to contribute to its users’ existential pleasure.

 

The investor, who might be designated as a representative of the new investment culture in the rising Slovenian economy, relinquished more than a third of the building’s useable area to the employees’ free time and recreation activities. (Here a greater productivity would certainly not be considered a failing). This interweaving of private and working life finds corroboration in a statement by Richard Sennet: “today there is a conviction that intimacy among people is a moral asset” (The Fall of the Public Man).