26 July 2022

Czech town of Zlin - Bata shoes, UK Garden City town planning and Le Corbusier

Map of Czech Republic,
note Zlin near the eastern border with Slovakia
Press to expand

The small town of Zlín in SE Moravia dates back to the late C14th. More recently industries app­eared in the mid-C19th. The town's connect­ion with the wider world st­arted to improve with the opening of a post of­f­ice in 1848. Castle owner Baron Claud­ius Bret­ton opened a match fact­ory in 1850, and in 1870 Rob­ert Florimont’s shoe fact­ory followed. But both business­es closed and Zlín remained small. Happily the telegraph opened in 1886, a new school opened in 1897 and the new rail­way was built in 1899.

When Tomáš Bata (1876–1932) entered the shoe business in 1894, most of the pro­duction was done by local workers from home. So Bata built a fac­tory beside the railway station! When facing fin­ancial worries, To­máš decided to sew shoes from canvas not leather, growing the company to 50 work­ers. Then Bata installed its first steam-driven machines!

In 1906 Bata built a new factory and soon began building houses for their factory employees, not quite as elegant as Villa of Tomáš Bata (1911) which was designed by Czech archit­ect Prof Jan Kotěra. After WW2 the Villa was re­turned to Tomáš Bata II, Tomas I’s son. The build­ing later hous­ed the headquarters of the Worldwide Bata organisation.

 Villa of Tomáš Bata, built 1911

WW1 brought big orders from the Austro-Hungarian Empire for boots, and the number of workers greatly increased.

Post-WW1, Bata wanted to dev­elop a city that matched his work phil­os­ophy. He was a busin­ess­man with a strong social conscience, keen to em­p­loy more people and to con­struct workers’ housing facil­it­ies.

Sadly he died in a plane crash in 1932 while leaving on a business trip in a fog. Then his half-brother Jan Antonín Bata (1898–1965) took ownership of the companies.

The town’s popul­at­ion grew from 3,000 (1894) to 43,000 (1938) and 75,000 (2018). So An­t­onín Bata gave Zlín a more domin­ant administ­rat­ive Buil­d­ing 21, des­ig­ned by Karfík. The 16 storeys were called Czech­oslovakia’s 1st sky scr­aper with a sp­ec­ial feature: Jan had his office built inside a fully equipped lift so that he could move up-and-down to manage his 100,000+ employees. Even abroad, when a Bata factory was built in East Tilbury London,  Gahura and Karfik designed the modernist architecture.

Bata's UK factory, East Tilbury.
by architects Gahura and Karfik,
opened 1933.

The industrial buildings Bata #14 and #15 were converted into a modern cultural centre: Regional Gallery of Fine Arts, Museum of S.E Moravia and František Bartoš Regional Library. The Regional Gall­ery of Fine Arts featured architecture and artists from pre-WW2 eg Alfons Mucha.

The industrial building Bata #14, Museum of S.E Moravia
Now a modern cultural centre:

The best feature of the city was a mixture of two urban ut­op­ian visions: a] Ebenezer Howard's Garden City Move­ment in UK in 1903 and b] Le Corbusier's Fren­ch vision of urb­an modern­ity. There were separate factory zones, residential areas, public building zones and areas of op­en space!

The factory zones, residential areas and public building zones were separated

Bata wanted housing surrounded by gard­ens for married staff. Zlin was like so many new towns developed by humanist industrialists: its development was to make the employees happier and healthier workers. As in British company towns eg Port Sunlight! Bata was ma­k­ing the new housing blocks  generous and surrounded by gardens. Wages were also gener­ous, and in the 1930s the working week was short­er than in UK industries. There was welfare sup­port and educat­ion was encouraged.

Houses for married workers
each surrounded by gardens

On visiting Zlín in 1935, Le Cor­busier was asked to design the new hous­es. Zlín’s plan, designed in Le Corb­us­ier’s Par­is atelier, ab­an­d­oned the cen­tr­al­ised city mod­el for the lin­ear city for­mat. Zlin’s model for modern architecture was a 6.15 m ferro-concrete cube, infilled with steel, red bricks, rein­for­c­ed concrete and glass. The sim­pl­e model was used by Bata's architects, Frantisek Gahura (1896-1958) & Vladimír Karfik (1901-96), for ALL industrial buildings, shops, schools, hospitals, hotel and hos­tels for unmarried work­ers.

Bata’s Hospital was first founded in 1927. The orig­inal ar­chitect­ure was designed by Gahura, to commem­or­ate Bata’s ach­ieve­­ments. As was the Monument of Tomáš Bata 1933. Grand Cinema was built in 1932, becoming the largest cinema in Europe (2580 seats). It also boasted the largest movie screen in Europe, des­igned by Czech architects Miro­slav Lor­enc (1896-1943) and Gahura. Zlín’s Bata Co. helped found the Mod­ern Art Gallery, created in 1936 from works of art pur­chased in contemporary Czech art shows. In Building #14 of the Zlín fac­tory, art sa­l­ons were held annually until 1948. Thus the expansion of Bata Co. was rel­at­ed to Zlin’s cultural activities.

 Grand Cinema, 1932

After the communists came to power post-WW2, the plant was taken and the link with the Batas ended. In the 1980s Zlin was renamed Gottwaldov, honouring Czechoslovakian Soc­ialist Republic Pres. Kl­ement Gottwald, 1948-53. From the post-war era, a road was cut via the Bata's villa gar­den, used as a green link between the house and factories. Then, on the slopes above the villa, a new high rise housing estate was built with a dramatic curved block.

There have been some big changes post-1989 when Bata's legacy was restored to pol­it­ical favour. Car show­rooms, shopping strips and fast food outlets were built on the city edge. Then close to the town cen­tre, between the factory area and the newer housing, a shopping mall was added. Zlin is now an entrepreneurial town.

Since 2001 Tomáš Bata University has offered st­udents degree pro­gram­mes in the hum­anities, arts, econ­omics, tech­nol­ogy, man­ag­e­ment and nat­ur­al sciences. TBU has gr­own to become a pro­­m­in­ent res­ear­ch centre in the Cz­ech Rep­ub­lic and abroad. With a student popul­ation of 13,500, TBU dev­el­oped strong res­earch & devel­op­­ment par­t­nership with instit­ut­ions all over the world, both within the Euro­p­ean Union and in Canada, India, U.S, Russia, Jap­an & China. Bata shoes are no lon­g­er made in Zlín but are made abroad.

Tomáš Bata University
opened 2001



10 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Hels - interesting to read about the history of Zlin ... I visited Brno in 1974 or 5, travelled by road from Prague for a machinery exhibition ... and as I was 'so young' don't remember much - was somewhat anxious as I was behind the Iron Curtain. Wish I could remember!

Bata shoes I think had factories in Northampton ... but fascinating to know about the development of the town of Zlin ... thanks - Hilary

Student of history said...

Do you know who was born and raised in Zlin. The late Ivana Trump.

Hels said...

Hilary

same here. I knew Prague well and Karlovy Vary less well, but not Zlin at all. My husband was born Czech, but once the borders changed, his parents' city became part of Ukraine.

The Bata factory in East Tilbury in Essex was well worth visiting. And even though the industrial estate was closed in 2005, the Bata Conservation Area had already become a Grade II Listed property in the 1990s.

Hels said...

Student

Until Ivana Trump died last week, I knew only that she was Czech. In fact I knew far more about Ebenezer Howard's and Le Corbusier's connections to Zlin than I knew about Ivana Trump's connection.

Bata Industrials Australia said...

Bata Shoe Company of Australia was established in 1948, part of the worldwide organisation. Production commenced in Mornington in 1961, and this remains our Head Office location today. With a strong industrial focus, the company manufactures and wholesales over a million pairs of footwear each year through its industrial business streams.

Bata Industrials Australia

Anonymous said...

Who among us in Australia didn't have a pair of Bata school shoes? Who back then would have guessed the story behind their school shoes. It always pleases me to hear about successful companies operating while retaining a social conscience.

Hels said...

Bata Industrials

many thanks. Your history page notes that the Australian success was associated with the novel international structure allowing Bata facilities everywhere to respond to the unique needs of its local customers. Sounds like a very special way of operating.

Hels said...

Andrew

to our ears, the idea of capitalists caring about their workers' health and happiness seems like nonsense. But there was already the "model village" concept developed by large business owners to house and look after their workers. Compare squalid East of London slums, for example, with the decent housing, schools and medical care, and gardens in Bournville (near Birmingham). The expanded model village concept worked very well in Zlin.

DUTA said...

Interesting read!
I must admit I've never heard of Bata or Zlin. I had neighbors of Czeck origin; they were from Prague mainly. I visited Prague and Terezinstadt looking for jewish history- that's all.
That said, shoes as a topic interest me , and I'll try to read about Bata shoes.

Hels said...

DUTA

me too. I only knew history from my family (Russians and after 1989 Ukrainians) or from university (British Empire, Western and Central Europe). So when I married a Czech, I had to literally locate towns in Czechoslovakia and Hungary where his uncles and cousins lived.

If it wasn't for Tom Stoppard's literature and Bata Shoes, I would never had heard of Zlin.