introduction
A Utopia of Modernity: Zlín | 30.04.2009
The symposium “A Utopia of Modernity: Zlín” is an event staged by Zipp – German-Czech Cultural Projects, an initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, together with the House of Art in Brno, the Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín, and the National Gallery in Prague; in association with the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, the Bauhaus College.
With the friendly support of the Region of Zlín and the District Authority of Zlín.
Conception and coordination: Katrin Klingan, Kerstin Gust with Rostislav Koryčánek,
Petra Hlavačková, Patricia Maurer, Zuzana Jürgens in collaboration with
Ladislava Horňáková and Radomira Sedlaková
Today the Czech city of Zlín is two things at once: a historically important architectural monument and a dynamic city boasting an energetic social and commercial life, the location of the Tomáš Baťa University, where some 10,000 students are currently enrolled. Built by the Baťa shoe company in the 1920s as a factory city where living and working were to enter into a perfect symbiosis, Zlín possesses a rich cultural heritage, epitomizing key ideas and architectural impulses of Modernity which are still palpable and traceable everywhere today. Looking at the former factory buildings located in the city center reveals that the past, the present, and the future of the modern educational and service industry location of Zlín exist next to one another in apparent harmony; strung out adjacent to the former company headquarters in Building 21, today the main offices of the municipal authority, are the former factory buildings which are still awaiting re-utilization allocation or refurbishment. The new university buildings in the center fit seamlessly into the cityscape, fully in accord with the strict row layout and standardized facades of the Baťa buildings which give the city its distinctive character.
Zlín is a prime example of a planned city in which all aspects of life, namely domestic living, education, and leisure time, were geared towards achieving a single goal, in this case optimizing the efficiency of a rapidly expanding shoe company. This constitutes its current relevance for city planners and architects. Located in the middle of the southern Moravian countryside, this modern planned city is unique in Europe. Based on the Fordist model, workers manufactured a product on the assembly line that was to soon turn the Baťa brand into a worldwide name.
Zlín seems to be a manifest social utopia: besides the modern architectural stylistic vocabulary, both the functional separation of the urban domains of living, workplaces, recreation, and transportation, as well as the design of the residential quarters inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s garden city, were entwined with an extremely advanced utilization of modern mass media serving educational and promotion purposes. Not only was a serially manufactured industrial product worked on in Zlín, but a ‘new man’ was to be created. Structurally this model drew on leftist societal ideas and its perspective, envisaging an optimistic future, can be considered progressive. At the same time however, the company boss Baťa also presided over a control apparatus which subordinated the life of an entire city to meeting economic objectives. Admiration for the efficiency of this genuinely capitalistic model was thus soon joined by a criticism of the anti-democratic conditions prevailing there. Zlín was not only a center of serial industrial work – the city itself soon became a serial model. The company built new satellite cities and towns across the globe, all based on Zlín and identical architectural parameters.
The symposium featuring prominent international scholars and theorists – including urbanists, architects, and historians – pursues the question if Zlín is relevant for issues currently faced by city planners and architects and thus represents a learning model for the future. From a contemporary perspective Zlín is an irritating example, for it concords neither with the critical articulations of Postmodernism, nor with the certainties proclaimed by defenders of Modernity. For the idea of Zlín Baťa himself drew on a specific model: while traveling through the USA he closely studied the Fordist production methods, and their general influence on Modernity in Europe needs to be discussed. As far as current planning considerations are concerned, property and ownership relations also play a role: they are entwined with the complex legal situation that has emerged as part of the privatization of former state property after 1989. Any debate on possible learning effects from the former social utopia of Zlín needs to address the hierarchical control mechanisms installed in this planned city – these have to be placed in relationship to our current understanding of democracy. It remains a paradox that the entrepreneur’s spatially organized mechanism of discipline and control was also a place of emancipation. Another question of relevance is if Zlín, given contemporary ideas of urban life, characterized for instance by density and functional intermingling, is even an urban city at all. This line of questioning is reinforced by the critical Postmodernist thesis of modern cities. In many respects Zlín is the perfect example for reviving discussion of this issue. Zlín was obviously nothing less than a corporate identity set in stone. The development of the Baťa brand, which the company founder had intermeshed with the planning of Zlín, seems exemplary today: this mechanism appears closely related to current relevant branding strategies, which can be highlighted and discussed against this background. The technologically advanced utilization of mass media for advertising and promotion purposes points far beyond the historical period of the city’s origins, while in many respects the education system can be considered as exemplary for following generations.
The symposium is not limited to a single location – it is conceived as a meandering format which aims to turn the topics up for discussion – architecture and the urban environment – into tangible experiences. With “Walks & Talks”, thematic sojourns conceived and conducted by experts, the symposium provides an opportunity to traverse the Baťa cosmos and show what the everyday life of current residents looks like in this monument of Modernity. Guided excursions take us to housing units where the original state has in part been altered considerably by rebuilding work. One-time Baťa employees are given a forum to express their views when we visit the “Former Employees Club”; in the vein of oral history, the stories of the employees – spanning several generations and now scattered across the globe – come to life. Inspecting the urban building ensembles from the 1920s and 1930s on site will show concretely where the interests of monument protection collide with the technological and spatial demands of re-utilization, raising the question if, and to what extent, conservation and an energetic use of a site are compatible. The former Baťa headquarters (Building 21), subject to refurbishing plans, is the most prominent excursion site to be visited revolving around the question of monument protection. The historical genesis of the shoe as an industrial product will be discussed and presented in the Zlín Shoe Museum: its evolution from a luxury good to an affordable article of daily use was not only motivated by economic gain but also had a social-utopian aspect – it was namely accompanied by extensive orthopedic research. Finally, another “Walk” takes us to the Zlín Film Studios, where from 1936 onwards the company produced its advertising films. This location turned into a progressive hub of Czechoslovakian film and later produced outstanding trick and marionette films – an idea of this production can be gained during a long film evening.
A trip to Zlín in southern Moravia is a trip to an actually built utopia. The factories, in which today smaller industrial enterprises have located their premises, the generous green spaces, and the free-standing apartment blocks were once the scene of a social experiment: here shoes were not only mass produced, but also the “new man”. The urban planning realized in Zlín has two faces: on the one hand, it was to serve a thoroughly regimented and controllable social entity – this is shown alone by the elevator which Jan Baťa, the brother of the company founder Tomáš, had mounted on the outside wall of the headquarters in 1938: this was nothing other than his mobile office, with which, moving between the floors of the building, he could at any time and unexpectedly seek out his employees. On the other hand, Zlín, which followed ideas of the garden city formulated by Ebenezer Howard, was as a genuine and convincing attempt to solve problems plaguing larger cities: the oppressive density of overpopulated tenements, sanitary shortcomings and air pollution, the lack of green spaces – these are all factors the city architect František Lydie Gahura avoided in his concept of a “factory in green space” presented in 1925. Tomáš and Jan Baťa, sons of a simple shoemaker, were to go a long way in their father’s craft, eventually establishing the family name as globally known brand. Zlín, the factory, was the nucleus of their success. The synchronization of city and enterprise, a strict regimenting of the everyday routine of employees, and the rigorous implementation of Fordist serial production not only proved that the Baťas were clever entrepreneurs, but also radical social engineers. Zlín was so schematically constructed that not only the shoes produced there became export hits. The factory city itself could be erected elsewhere like a reproducible module. Jan Baťa demonstrated precisely this – after leaving Czechoslovakia as it was under Nazi occupation, he established new Baťa cities at various locations across the world, much in the vein of the franchising principle.
Learning from Zlín?
Pursing this question would be more than worthwhile: after all, Zlín embodies the utopian trait of Modernity in the form of an ideal-type. At the same time though, the attempt to provide an integrated solution to the problem of balancing work and leisure for everyone reveals how similar the results can be despite very different political objectives. The idea of equality which the Baťas had developed for their employees was not inspired by a leftist social utopia; it was the means to achieve a coolly calculated optimization of performance in the sense of Fordist factory production. Ultimately, any discussion about Zlín will have to pose the question as to how the industrial legacy of Modernity is to be approached in a postindustrial age. The direction can be taken from the present-day city itself: the governing authority has already decided against placing the city under monument protection and so refused a “musealization”. Zlín is a unique and exemplary chapter of Modernity. Astonishingly, it is nonetheless little known. The attention afforded the city by Zipp in a symposium and exhibition can only be the beginning of a more intensive exploration of this theme.
