June 20, 2011
City Inc.: Bata Cities/Corporate Towns
Opening 22 June 2011, 6 pm. Free entrance. Exhibition runs between 23 June and 31 August, 2011. Bauhaus Institute, Dessau. Click here for more information.
The Exhibition ‘City Inc.’ shows the legacy of an utopian city of the early 20th century. Inspired by Fordist theories, garden city principles and socialist ideals, the Czech shoe company Bata went on a mission to “shoe the world“. In Zlin, in the Czech Republic, Bata built a first company town according to modernist architectural precepts, testing the idea of a model town that could be efficiently replicated.
These Bata cities, soon to be exported all over the world, all combined the same components: architecture, urban planning, management, social engineering and communication. The geopolitical context of colonialism as well as growing international trade and labour division encouraged the company’s expansion.Soon enough the Bata empire formed an international corporate network of 80 Bata cities as places of production as well as a modern way of life.
The exhibition introduces two Bata satellite towns, Batanagar (India) and East Tilbury (Great Britain); two places which have developed in opposite directions depending on the remaining presence or final absence of the Bata production in the city. Not only does the show give an insight into the complexities and contradictions of life in a city that has changed dramatically during the last century, it also reflects the uncertain future of these two company towns in the context of current strategies of global corporations with regards to their “urban footprints”.