In the second half of the 1930s, top town-planners of the Bata company began to work with the idea of creating an ideal industrial city. In 1937 they prepared a manuscript for a book, Ideal Industrial City, but it was never published. Nevertheless, three satellite towns to the town of Zlin, where Bata's main operations were based, were established according to principles formulated in the book manuscript: Batovany, Zruc nad Sázavou and Sezimovo Ústí (the latter two in the Czech Republic). The industrial and housing complex in Bat'ovany - Partizánske was the last Bata development to be built in Slovakia before the Second World War.

Bat'ovany - Partizánske (originally Šimonovany - Batovany, from 1948 to 1949 Batovany, and since 1949 Partizánske)

Part of MODERN MOVEMENT NEIGHBOURHOOD COOPERATION MODERNIST DREAMS - 4 CASE STUDIES

• General Introduction
  
  • Exhibition
    
    1. Background:
       In the 1930s the Bata Group was a well-known and prosperous shoe-making company. Tomáš Bata had begun manufacturing shoes in the 1920s and the company continued successfully, even expanding outside its hometown of Zlín in the 1930s. The company established production facilities in Czechoslovakia, as well as abroad, e.g. in Croatia (Borovo), Poland (Chelmek, Otmet), The Netherlands (Best), Switzerland (Möhlin), and even in the USA (Belcamp), India (Batanagar) and Brasil (Batatuba). In 1931 Bata Co. purchased a leather production facility in Bošany, a small village in the Nitrianska Niva valley at the bottom of the Velký Tríbec hills near to Partizánske. Svit-Batizovce followed as a plant producing synthetic fibres. Batovany, as a part of Šimonovany, was another step in the strategy of building a shoe production centre in Slovakia.
    2. Production and Work:
       In the visions of the modern architects of the 20th century, industry was the only reason to create a town. Batovany represented such a town. It was created "from scratch" as a machine for working and living in, to paraphrase Le Corbusier, the guru of the Modern Movement. Production was the triggering and propulsion mechanism of all the Bata Co. satellite towns. The rhythm of production in the towns also determined the rhythm of living.
    3. Community:
       Similar to other satellite towns of Bata Co., Batovany - Partizánske operated from the very beginning as a large community. All its inhabitants worked for one company, lived in one quarter in similar houses and spent their leisure time together. They were mostly young people, who had accomplished their training in Zlín and then moved to one of its satellite towns. Because of the strong feeling of identification with the Bata Group, they naturally created a community, and were even called "Bataists". New inhabitants, who joined the community later on, were aware of the special character of the community and tried to integrate.
    4. Living:
       If we should chose one element that decisively affected the face of all Bata satellite towns, it would definitely be the family house built from (generally unrendered) red brick. If we look at any of the towns created in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, including Zlín itself, Best (The Netherlands), Swiss Möhlin (Switzerland), Belcamp (USA) or Batovany, redbrick houses laid out in a pleasant order dominate each of them. The prevailing number of houses for families in the Bata Group satellite towns resulted from Tomáš Bata's opinion that his employees were supposed to "work collectively but live individually." F. L. Gahura, Zlín's principal architect, commented that "Mr. Bata means that a person who lives in a house with a garden has a lower fluctuation and digs in his garden instead of doing politics, he rather relaxes in the grass and does not go to pubs or political meetings.
    5. Building and Construction:
       "We do the same thing when we build production plants. We look for new masses that better suit our requirements. It could be a detail, yet nevertheless important. As an example, we can use the case of a floor and floor-tiles: we aim to create a floor that is perfect, firm and without any dust layers, because the dust wears machines significantly and the floor's firmness is crucial for moving and relocating machines."