introduction
The Baťa Phenomenon - Zlín Architecture 1910-1960 | 26.02.2009
Zlín is a brilliant Phenomenon.
Le Corbusier
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery in Prague - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art.
The exhibiiton is held under the auspices of Stanislav Mišák, Governor of the Zlin Region and Irena Ondrová, Mayor of the City of Zlín.
The admission fee is included in the admission fee to the permanent exhibition.
Basic 160 CZK/ from 4 pm 100 CZK
Reduced 80 CZK/ from 4 pm 50 CZK
Family ticket 200 CZK/from 4 pm 100 CZK
Opening hours:
Daily except Mondays from 10 am to 6 pm.
www.ngprague.cz www.kgvu.zlin.cz
Zlín was one of Czechoslovakia´s most prominent centers of architecture between the two World Wars and the only European city systematically built in the functionalist style. Even before Athens Charter was drawn up and declared in 1934, Zlín could already boast a highly distinctive and original approach to town-planning. As an urban and architectonic complex, Baťa´s Zlín was a phenomenon unmatched in Europe and, over the years, continued to be a unique and telling testimony to the company´s building activities, both in the inter-war period and for a short time thereafter as well. with incredible speed, Zlín expanded from a predominantly shoe-manufacturing town to an agglomeration with diversified industries that reflected the latest research and know-how, a city with an extensive infrastructure and an array of public services. Zlín was designed during the inter-war period as a garden city with strictly functional zoning, and its development was strongly connected to the Baťa Company´s centrally-located production facilities.
To this day, Zlín´s architecture is deeply and indelibly imprinted with a specific corporate design. The nature of the build-up areas was organically derived from industrial construction, from the architecture of factory buildings. This is why it is possible to speak of the city´s industrial aesthetics and the way its urban life is based upon an industrial model. Thus it was that Zlín acquired its characteristic apperance not only through a standardized town-planning concept, but also due to a new way of living. These specific aspects were subsequently reflected in the company´s building activities outside Zlín, namely in its construction of department stroes that sprung up throughout Czechoslovakia and abroad, and especially in the building of Baťa settlements around the world. The Baťa factories and housing in the satellite towns were self-sustained industrial and residential areas that exemplified the development of a perfectly-devised system of unification and standardization, whose style bore the hallmarks of the Zlín centre.
Zlín´s architecture is not only a unique phenomenon by Czech standards. It is based on one of the most extensive and best-conceived practical applications of consummate standardization and typification, utmost economy in building and maximum simplification and reduction in the number of construction elements employed in all types of buildings. Irrespective of whether it was factory, a school, a hotel or a student dormitory, all edificies had brickwork, windows in metal frames and a standardized 6,15x6,15-meter ferro-concrete skeleton structure. The outcome was speedy, economical, rational, exquisitely functional and decoration-free, a type of architecture suggestive of a faultlessly-operating machine and functioning as an inimitable (and unimitated) corporate trademark.
Zlín´s architecture is presented in the exhibition through original architectural plans and drawings executed by architects such as F. L. Gahura, V. Karfík, M. Lorenc, J. Voženílek and M. Drofa. Models of Zlín´s prominent buildings are also on view (e.g. the Administration building, Monument to Tomas Baťa, production facilities, hospital premises, several types of family houses, the Collective House, and the villas of J. Hanzelka and M. Zikmund). Examples of the Baťa Company´s output are also shown; apart from a representative collection of Baťa footwear and relted advertisements, a bicycle and automobile tires are exhibited as well.
The items on display have been kindly loaned by The Moravian Provincial Archives, The Brno Municipal Museum, The National Technical Museum, The Museum of South-easter Moravia in Zlín, Regional Museum in Vysoké Mýto, Fatra a.s. Napajedla and Samohýl motor Zlín a.s.
A comprehensive catalogue accompanying the exhibition is also available.
International Symposium
"A Utopia of Modernity: Zlín"
May 19 in Prague, May 20-23 in Zlín
The conference "A Utopia of Modernity: Zlín" is devoted to architecture and urban planning, and also to. Renowned international scholars from the disciolines of architecture, cultural studies, sociology, and urban planning will critically illuminate Zlín and the social utopia of TOmáš Baťa - both in terms of a historical perspective as well as with a view to the present.
A conference organized and staged by Zipp - German-Czech Cultural Projects, an initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, with the National Gallery in Prague, the Brno House of Arts, the Regional Gallery for Fine Arts in Zlín and i ncooperation with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Bauhaus Kolleg.
Admission free
Registration/Contact: www.projekt-zipp.de
