Utopia, Inc.: Czech Culture and Bata Shoe Company Architecture and Garden Cities

Abstract

In 1937, Vladimir Karfik , the chief architect for the Bata Shoe Company and a former apprentice to both Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the Bata Company's office tower with a unique executive corner office. Like many corporate offices of its day, this office was equipped with a lavatory, telephone switchboard, retractable stenographer seat and intercom system. But this is where the similarity ended. This executive suite was also an "elevator," one that enabled the chief executive to move from floor to floor so as to interact with his employees throughout the seventeen story building. It reflected the Bata Shoe Company's progressive and experimental approach to corporate management and the optimism of the modern age. Established in 1894 by Tomas Bata in the Moravian Czech town of Zlin, the Bata Shoe Company' employed architecture and garden city concepts as a means to represent and perpetuate a complex corporate culture and strategy. The elevator-office, both in form and interpretation, is representative of all Bata Shoe Company architecture built between 1916 and 1946.

The Local History of an International Type: The Structural Panel Building in Czechoslovakia

“…This included a machine for prefabricating building panels on site. (Jenkins 1999) During World War II, building research in Zlín was directed towards fully prefabricated houses and later small apartment buildings that would be quicker and cheaper to construct than the traditional brick models, although other aspects including size, layout, and orientation remained the same. In 1940, the Department for Cast and Prefabricated Buildings (Oddělení pro lité a montované domky) was established.…”