The Regional Gallery in Zlín will present unrealized projects by prominent architects for interwar Zlín

Thanks to the exceptional growth and prosperity of the Baťa company and the indelible influence of Tomáš Baťa, Zlín became a modern urban center with a distinctive architectural style and pace of life during the interwar period. The enormous construction activities of Tomáš Baťa and Jan Antonín Baťa, in collaboration with renowned architects, transformed the small town into an agglomeration of more than 40,000 inhabitants. Zlín became one of the peaks of First Republic functionalism and the only consistently developed functionalist city in Europe.

“Over the course of forty years, the regional gallery has acquired extensive photographic documentation, a wealth of valuable archival materials, and collection items while preparing a series of architectural exhibitions that document the development and underscore the significance of Zlín's interwar architecture. The starting point for preparing this exhibition was a collection of unrealized projects for the Baťa company. The presentation will introduce the designs of architects František Lýdie Gahura, Vladimír Karfík, Miroslav Lorenc, Josef Gočár, Jan Víšek, Otto Rothmayer, Josef Havlíček, Bohuslav Fuchs, Jiří Voženílek, Josef Štěpánek, Kamil Roškot, Vladimír Uklein, Emanuel Hruška, Lev Krča, František Cubr, and Zdeněk Pokorný. Most of these have been forgotten in archives,” explains Ladislava Horňáková, the author and curator of the exhibition.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view fifty proposals divided thematically into five categories: urban studies for the Baťa company, the Náměstí Práce (Work Square), new buildings on the Náměstí Práce, sacred buildings and memorials, and public buildings in interwar Zlín. “The installation allows for a comparison of the architects' approaches to the assigned tasks and tracks the evolution of opinions on individual projects from the perspective of the investor – the Baťa company. While under T. Baťa’s leadership, the requirement for efficiency was placed on production and public buildings, and the builder relied primarily on architect F. L. Gahura or the city architecture consultant J. Gočár to realize their visions, his successor J. A. Baťa demanded ‘greater representativeness and worldliness’ from architects for corporate buildings and paid more attention outside of his own design and construction department to renowned personalities in both Czech and world architecture,” adds the curator.

The presented proposals are significant for complementing the overall picture of the Baťa company's activities in interwar architecture and also bring closer the visionary ideas for the further development of the Zlín agglomeration, which, however, could not be fulfilled due to post-war events.

The exhibition is part of events commemorating the 150th anniversary of Tomáš Baťa's birth in collaboration with UNESCO this year.

The exhibition will be on display until April 19, 2026. Visitors can hear more interesting information during guided tours with the curator on Tuesdays, March 24 and April 14, starting at 5 PM.

More on the website galeriezlin.cz.