Zlín University will demolish the Faculty of Technology building and construct a new one there

Zlín – Tomas Bata University in Zlín (UTB) will demolish its oldest building, the Faculty of Technology building in the city center. The building dates back to 1932, and the faculty has been located there for over 50 years. The condition of the building is poor, and experts have recommended its demolition, primarily due to structural issues. Furniture is being cleared from the building, and next week, demolition work is expected to begin with the removal of the roof of the five-story building. The demolition is expected to be completed in the summer, said the university’s bursar Alexander Černý to reporters.

The university plans to construct a new faculty building on the site, with work potentially starting in a year; the faculty could start using the new building in September 2026. The demolition work will cost 24 million crowns excluding VAT, while the cost of the new building is estimated at 566 million crowns. Of this amount, 441 million could come from grants, with the remainder covered by the university's own funds.

The demolition will be challenging due to the surrounding buildings and the movement of pedestrians and vehicles. The site is at the edge of the Baťa industrial complex, adjacent to the House of Culture and next to the bus station. The roof will be removed over the course of a month, as it must be safely disposed of due to the presence of asbestos. After that, machine demolition of the building will begin, systematically dismantling it from the top using hydraulic shears and deconstruction. According to Pavel Blažek, head of the investment and property department at UTB, the work should not be extremely noisy, as hydraulic hammers will not be used. However, there is a risk of dust, even though the areas will be continuously sprayed with water. The demolition is expected to last two months, after which the shared walls with the House of Culture will be repaired.

"We have tried to do this technically in a way that minimizes the burden on the city. All rubble will be sorted on-site, and subsequently transported to a temporary storage location, where it will undergo further sorting and crushing," Blažek stated. The site will be fenced, and vehicles will turn around in the courtyard of the construction site. About 20,000 tons of rubble will be removed from the site, of which nearly 30 tons will be the roof with asbestos.

Ongoing work will partially restrict pedestrian access on Desátá and J.A. Baťa streets for two-week intervals, where a detour route will be marked out. Vehicle traffic will be maintained, Desátá street will be one-way for 15 days, and a detour will be established. Once the demolition is complete, the fence will be removed, and the area will likely be used for parking until the new building is constructed.

Before the demolition, laboratories, equipment, and both staff and students had to be relocated from the building to other university spaces. The faculty has nearly 1,700 students and 170 employees. There were 30 laboratories, ten seminar rooms, and two large lecture halls. According to Dean Roman Čermák, the faculty is now temporarily relocated across four different locations. The new building, which is also expected to be five stories, will, according to him, advance the faculty due to a new layout and new equipment that could not be accommodated in the original spaces. Another limitation was the traditional module of Baťa buildings measuring 6.15 by 6.15 meters. "We will no longer have such restrictions. Until now, when we wanted to purchase equipment, we had to buy only something small that would fit in there," Čermák stated. Limitations were also dictated by the building’s structure.

The first floor will be elevated to accommodate engineering technologies. "Teaching at the Faculty of Technology largely represents instruction on a pilot scale to ensure that graduates have experience with the machines they will encounter in production. The new setup will be such that the ground floor, which will be designated for technological laboratories, will be tailored for that. There will be cranes that will allow the placement of machines as we know them from manufacturing or semi-production," Čermák noted. Thanks to the new possibilities, study programs could also be expanded. "This particularly concerns the connection between engineering and the processing of polymer materials in general," the dean added.