The Zlín Regional Gallery presents cities built by the Baťa company

Tilbury, satellite settlement and factory of Baťa company

Zlín - The regional gallery of fine arts in Zlín presents, from today, three towns built by the Baťa company: East Tilbury in England, Batanagar in India, and the Swiss town of Möhlin. The exhibition titled Baťa's Towns will run until January 5, the gallery spokesperson Marika Blažková informed CTK today.
    The exhibition introduces visitors to the creation and development of these towns and also shows how multinational footwear corporations transform regions and cities, noted Blažková. "The aim of the exhibition is to familiarize visitors not only with the unprecedented scale of the Baťa footwear empire, its expansion into the world, and the history of the three selected satellites but primarily with the current state of these three towns," the spokesperson stated.
    The exhibition was created based on a research project by the Bauhaus Foundation, which took place from 2010 to 2011. The transformation of the Baťa footwear company from a small family business to a global corporation is, according to experts, a phenomenon not only of economic history but also of architectural and urban history.
    Zlín had around 3,000 inhabitants around 1900. During the interwar period, this number rose to 40,000. Between 1920 and 1940, a complex of more than 2,000 buildings was constructed there. Tomáš Baťa was a pioneer of the methods of today's globalized production; the foreign satellite towns of Baťa's company with typical functionalist buildings represent, according to architects, the earliest form of today's corporate architecture.
    The gallery has prepared a lecture by curator Ladislava Horňáková titled The Ideal Industrial City of the Baťa Company on December 3. A week later, a guided tour of the exhibition will take place at the Baťa Institute, where the gallery is located.

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Baťa's Towns
November 13, 2013 – January 5, 2014, ground floor of building 14, Baťa Institute

Exhibition curators: Markéta Březovská and Rostislav Koryčánek
Exhibition curator in Zlín: Ladislava Horňáková

Accompanying program:
December 3, 2013 at 5 PM. Lecture by Ladislava Horňáková: The Ideal Industrial City of the Baťa Company
December 10, 2013 at 5 PM. Guided tour of the exhibition with Markéta Březovská and Rostislav Koryčánek