Zlin

Tomas Bata and his siblings founded a shoe company in Zlin in 1894, and he turned it into one of the largest footwear companies in the world, and from the 1920s he rebuilt the town around it to a single system: a standard structural module of 6.15 by 6.15 metres in reinforced concrete, filled with red brick and glass, used for factories, shops, schools, a hospital, a hotel and thousands of workers' houses, laid out on a grid with greenery between - a complete functionalist company town, planned by Frantisek Gahura and Vladimir Karfik. Building 21, the administrative skyscraper of 1938, has the feature everyone reports: the director's office was built inside a moving lift, six by six metres with air conditioning and a telephone, so the manager could go to any floor rather than summon people. It works and it can be ridden.

History

Legends derive the name from slín, marl, or from a golden apple, but it most likely comes from an old Slavic personal name. Zlín is first mentioned in 1322, when Queen Elizabeth Richeza acquired it, already a market town and a craft guild centre for Moravian Wallachia; from 1358 it belonged to Bishop Albrecht of Šternberk and became the seat of the Moravian Šternberks, and in 1397 it became a town. The Hussite Wars forced the Šternberks to sell it in 1437; the 16th century brought peace and prosperity, with drapery, pottery and shoemaking. Hungarian rebels raided and burned the town in 1605, the Thirty Years' War left it half deserted, and under the Serényi family it recovered only slowly; a match factory of 1850 and a shoe factory of 1870 soon closed, and the railway arrived in 1899. The town began to grow fast after Tomáš Baťa and his siblings founded a shoe factory in 1894: by 1922 it was the leading footwear maker in Czechoslovakia, Baťa became mayor in 1923, the firm spread into engineering, chemistry and rubber, and in 1923-1938 it built a new complex of factories, thousands of flats, schools, department stores, research facilities and a hospital on modern planning principles, making Zlín a functionalist industrial city unique in Europe (Wikipedia, Zlín).

What's there

• One structural module, a whole town - 6.15 metre concrete bays in brick and glass.
• An office in a lift - the director's room in Building 21, still working.
• Gahura's plan - factories, schools and housing laid out as one system.
• Workers' housing - thousands of standard brick houses on the grid.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Before you go

The interest is architectural and needs some reading to see. The lift office runs on the tower tour with set times. Some Bata buildings are neglected. Zlin is a working city, not a preserved set.

Nearby

Luhacovice spa is south-east; Kromeriz is west.

Key facts