![]() It was then - with the direction of renowned architects like Frantisek Gahura and Vladimir Karfik - that many of the stand-out buildings appeared. When Tomas Bata died in a plane crash on July 12, 1932, his brother Jan Antonin took over the company. Across from the factory complex and beyond the main four-lane road that cuts through the city stands a rectangular-shaped 11-story hotel from the 1930s. Ringing the centre, rows of boxy, two-storied, red-brick homes, once used by Bata workers and called Batovky, dot leafy neighbourhoods and are lived in today. ![]() The refurbishment work today continues to showcase the red brickwork that colours Zlin, now a city of 75,000 tucked in a lush valley 300 km (186 miles) southeast of Prague. ![]() It wasn’t until after communism that the Bata brand reappeared in the country. The success of the Bata shoe empire funded Zlin’s growth from a town of 3,000 in 1894, when the company started, to a city of over 40,000 by 1938 when the Batas fled to Canada before the Nazi occupation during World War Two. “We have to think about what we can do with so many buildings in such a large area in a smaller city like Zlin.to bring new life.” RED BRICK SHOWCASEīata is still a global brand with 5,000 shops in more than 70 countries, but in Zlin, it is a few big tyre companies - including a Continental factory in neighbouring Otrokovice - and countless small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms that now drive the town’s economy. “That time (of Bata) is over,” said Martin Jarolim, Cream Real Estate’s director. The Zlin region will finish a 900 million crown ($43.79 million) overhaul of two Bata buildings next to the railway station that will house a museum, library and gallery for the Bata Institute next year.īlocks away, private developer Cream Real Estate is building a 300 million crown residential, office and commercial project in a refurbished former Bata factory building. Bata has not produced shoes there for more than 70 years and dozens of the red-brick buildings in its giant factory complex fell into disrepair, something that has continued since the 1989 return of democracy.īut the architecture remains, and now public and private investors are in the final stages of a decade-old plan to restore the area with cafes, housing and entertainment centres. Workers lived a short walk from the factory in “Bata houses”, and Zlin’s 2,000-plus-seat cinema was Europe’s largest.Ī world war and four decades of communism has taken some of the shine off Zlin since then. PRAGUE, Oct 31 (Reuters) - When Tomas Bata turned the Czech town of Zlin into a global shoe capital and created a “utopian” factory village for his workers almost a century ago, his red-brick architecture won widespread praise from the likes of Le Corbusier as a “shining phenomenon”.īy the 1930s, the Bata company had built Europe’s second-highest skyscraper, with its own mobile office tucked in an elevator.
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