Tomas Bata, the shoemaker from the Czech Republic, was known as much for his factories as he was for his shoes. Between 1894, when he founded his first factory in Zlin, and 1932, when, aged 56, he was killed in an air crash, the population of the Moravian city increased tenfold. Almost single-handedly he had turned Zlin into a showcase town. Combining 19th-century paternalistic ideals with Modernist architecture, Bata created an entire Constructivist garden city. Much of the work was by Vladimir Karfik (1901–96) and Frantisek Gahura (1891–1958), who had studied under Le Corbusier.
Utopian Vision
In the months before his death, Bata brought his Utopian vision – along with Karfik and Gahura – to Britain, setting it down on 650 acres of farmland by the Thames in East Tilbury, not far from Tilbury docks 30 miles east of London. The first workers had been trained in Zlin, and the idea was that a worker, once trained by Bata, could be employed in any other Bata factory – Zlin satellites – around the world. (Jan Tusa, father of Sir John Tusa, the former head of the BBC World Service, brought his family from Zlin when he was appointed managing director of the British factory in 1939).
The factory closed in 2006 and today, though protected as a conservation area, it stands largely abandoned among pea fields in the countryside beside the modest village that has grown up beside it. The workers’ houses, semi-detached, cream-painted blocks with bay windows and turquoise paintwork, are still inhabited. Their residents include some of the volunteers at in the Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre in the library, where there is a collection of memorabilia from what was clearly a close-knit and by-and-large contented community of employees.
Hotel, Cinema and Sports Centre
Among the items is crockery from the former Bata Hotel, which stands in front of the library and has now been turned into flats. There are shops on the ground floor, as there were when the factory was functioning, and the nearby village hall was built as the Bata cinema. The swimming pool, sports facilities and technical institution are no longer standing. But the main buildings are. These consist of a power house and three five-story buildings that are desperate to find full usage. Some are occupied, for storage and warehousing, and a white paint is currently bringing the first of them back to life. But the largest of them, with the distinctive Bata logo, is in disrepair. Steel reinforcing rods protrude through the concrete, and they need more than just a lick of paint.
Reporting on the site in 2005, English Heritage concluded: ‘The significance of the Bata Settlement is both international, as one of an unparalleled global collection of Functionalist satellites or colonies, and national, as a rare example of an inter-war planned industrial village and an uncommon ensemble of Modernist buildings.’
Bata Shoe Business Today
There are still 72 Bata factories around the world, and the company remains in the family’s hands. Its continued commitment to architecture has led to the creation of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto by award-winning Raymond Moriyama.
But times have moved on. Buildings that were designed along the lines of the Ford plants in Chicago, which Tomas Bata visited shortly before setting up the East Tilbury factory, are no longer viable. Plans to regenerate the site, which has been renamed the Thames Industrial Park, are now under discussion. What is certain is that it is still locally well loved, and every effort will go into seeing it does not fall further into decay.
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