Factory village: Batadorp, an example of brick cubism

All architecture for Batadorp was provided by Moravian architects from Zlín. The houses were built in standardized models of several types. The houses in Best were most likely designed by Antonín Vitek and J. Polácek and were possibly adjusted to suit the specific situation by Rossmanith. The style of building is rational and modernist with frugal facades and a square plasticity in the spirit of Functionalism. The different types vary in details. All houses can be characterized as: a cubist treatment of the whole, flat roofs with a pronounced wide trim, symmetrical facades and the use of reddish brown brick. The houses do not follow the garden city esthetic and make no reference to local vernacular architecture.

One of the old factory building, now Bata Industrials, that flank the factory village on the eastside.

The buildings do not conform to the English garden city esthetic. This is fairly typical of factory villages in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The Unwinesk vernacular esthetic wasn't by default used for the buildings, although winding streets and the use of closes is prevalent. The planned closes of Batapolis were never executed, but there are two curved streets present in Batadorp.

Apart from the semidetached houses for the labourers the Batapolis concept also included houses for middle management and large villas for the higher echelons. Here one of the large freestanding houses built  for management in a modernist style (so-called brick cubism). All buildings are built in the same style with variations in details.

 

Batadorp is a very recognizable factory village. All buildings were designed along the same principles with varying details in the doors and additions such as circular windows, a bench next to the front door and the size and shape of the canopy ledges (luifel) above the front door.

The typical flat roofed workers houses are constructed of brick. Modernism in the Netherlands is not joined to a Bauhaus esthetic. It is more typically concerned with providing better and more user friendly dwellings with the latest amenities such as a fitted kitchen, an indoor toilet, running water, a window that opens in every room, a boiler, etcetera.

 

The 1980s buildings contrast sharply with the older houses. They have pitched roofs and are arranged in often long rows of adjoined houses (i.e. not a terrace as such, but houses linked by the garage or a side extension; this is a very common model in the Netherlands).

Factory village: Batadorp

The N.V. Maatschappij voor Schoen- en Lederindustrie Bata (Shoe and Leather industry Bata PLC) already exploited 28 shoeshops when the company decided to open a factory in the Netherlands. After negotiations with the municipality of Groot-Eindhoven between 1931 and '32 proved in vain, the company approached the neighbouring municipality of Best. Land there was very cheap, and the desired location bordered onto a railway line and a shipping canal. Welschap airport (the most important reason for the initial choice of Eindhoven) was not too far away, so senior staff could be flown in from Moravia.

August 10 1933 165 hectares were sold to the Bata company. The first factory buildings were consecrated on march 24 1934. They are so-called daylight buildings with large windows and built using readymade cast enforced concrete pillars and lintels, thus allowing for maximum floor space. The long buildings are placed in file according to a strict grid. The primary production units (leather cutting, workshops, shoe assembly and laboratories) were placed in the first two rows. The warehouses, subsidiary production units (rubber production, tannery, cardboard production and paper mill) and utilities (filtration plant, pump houses and boiler house) were situated in rows 3, 4 and 5.

It was common practice for Bata to build housing near their factories. They did so in every country where they opened a new factory. Workers housing had also been erected next to their first production site, so this practice was part of the business model. Order and neatness was greatly appreciated by the company bosses and they imposed strict rules on hygiene. This might seem rather paternalistic nowadays but it resulted in a level of facilities and amenities that would be unattainable for most other workmen for decades to come.

Bata had a neighbourhood constructed between the factory site and the canal fork (where the Beatrix Canal connects to the Wilhelmina Canal) consisting of 130 dwellings in detached and semidetached houses. For single workers large hostels were built opposite the factory site. Batadorp included not just workers housing but also schools, a hairdressing salon, a medical office, sporting grounds and villa's for the management. The company controlled the everyday lives of its employees. Not just by dictating they don't wear clogs but shoes (after all they worked in a shoe factory), but also by founding sporting clubs, a brass band, an amateur dramatics club and a voluntary fire service. 

A sketch plan of the historic factory village of Batadorp as it existed in 1950.

Initially the plan was to erect the houses along a grid pattern of streets that extended from the factory grid. The housing grid measured 95 by 90 metres. Only one grid cell was completed between 1933 and '35 with 30 semidetached houses in three rows and an additional 4 semidetached and 3 detached houses on the edges of two further grid cells. Opposite the factory site a lodgings for journeymen (Jonggezellenhuis) was constructed in 1934. A year later three more such buildings were completed behind it. In 1935 the layout of the streets was changed to comply with the garden city esthetic the planning officer Bolsius felt best suited such a factory village.

The clear shift in spatial concept coincides with the 1938 Batapolis plan by De Cassares in which the garden city esthetic is added to the already realized settlement grid in a rational manner. Only the uppermost corner where garden city and older grid were joined together was built.

The rest of Batadorp follows this new spatial idea. In 1938 eight semidetached villa's are added to the existing buildings in the first two grid cells. Another semidetached unit was inserted in 1939. A further 54 semidetached houses are added towards the Beatrix Canal between 1938 and 1941. This was the first phase of what was envisaged as Batapolis: a factory town that was never completed. 

Batadorp was developed over a relatively short period of  about a decade. During this time the emphasis shifted from a rational to a garden city style layout. The buildings were not designed or placed according to the garden city esthetic of Raymond Unwin.

The company village was named after the firm: Batadorp (literally: Bata village). All houses built by the Bata company had flat roofs, an attic would only lead to the inhabitants hoarding clutter was the idea. The present bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal wasn't built until the 1950's. So before that time the settlement lay very isolated from neigbouring Best. With the new bridge the connection to Best was improved and it was decided that future development of housing would be better placed between the factory site and the existing village of Best. Wilhelminadorp was subsequently built north of Batadorp.

In the 1960's shoe production was moved abroad to low wage countries and the factory village was sold to the municipality.  In 1978 all the houses were sold to the tenants by the Bata company. During the 1980's the villa's were replaced with new houses and the neighbourhood was expanded by developing the former villa gardens. These additional houses were built with pitched roofs. Another example of the blatant disregard of architects for the sense of place and strong identity of this factory village.

On the other side of the railway line a large villa community was built from the late 1960's into the 1980's in a preexisting pine forest that doubled up as a public park for the factory workers. It has since been developed into a golf course. On the north side of the canal Best grew into an important suburb of Eindhoven. Now the main seat of Bata Industrials, the factory still exists to this day. Safety shoes and socks are produced here. Both factory and the original housing have been designated an industrial heritage site.

The present-day Batadorp comprises both the former factory village and an 1980s neighbourhood comprising of mainly adjoined houses.

Factory village: Batapolis in Best

In 1894 Tomáš and Antonin Baťa founded the Shoe factory T. & A. Baťa in their native town of Zlín in Moravia, presently in the Czech Republic. The company sought to implement industrial methods of shoe production and technical improvements such as the first cloth made shoe Batovka, first produced mechanically in 1897. Tomáš Baťa took inspiration from the  Ford factory assembly line set-up with standardized components. The whole production process and sales were kept under the companies control. They even produced their own rubber for the soles on site.

As a result of the rational and all encompassing Bata-concept of a factory with workers colony the small provincial town of Zlín grew into a large industrial city. The architects Kotara and Gahura pioneered an urban model they had called Batapolis. In the centre the factory was situated. The factory grounds were laid out according to a grid pattern. That way operating the railway was less cumbersome, the production process could be organized linearly and the factory buildings could be better positioned to have maximum daylight flood through the windows of the production halls. Around the factory the houses were erected. All were semi-detached dwellings, with free standing houses for the higher echelons. The houses were loosely grouped and had large gardens. Within the Batapolis model, families were housed in houses; apartments were designated to single workmen.

From the 1920s the firm expands within Europe. They open their first Bata store in the Netherlands in 1922. To circumvent customs tariffs Bata decides to build several factories all over Europe to produce for the local market. They didn't just build factories but also villages for the workers. At the end of 1933  a new factory was built south of the village of Best in the Netherlands. This factory is an exact copy of the mother factory in Zlín. At this time Bata exploited 28 shoe stores in the country. Many of these sold shoes and also had a workshop for repairs. The site in Best was chosen because of its proximity to a main train line (Eindhoven - Tilburg), the shipping canal (Wilhelmina Kanaal) and the low land values. The site was rather isolated and consisted of former heathland. This isolated location was ideal for creating a independent Batapolis. The factory produced shoes for women, men and children as well as sport shoes.

The regional plan De Meierij (literally: the bailiwick) drafted by the provincial planning department had not reckoned with a large factory site in the middle of the heath. Bata was allowed to build there, because securing employment was important. Planner J.M. de Cassares was in charge of drafting plans for the expansions of villages within the Meierij-region. His rational approach, modern stance on urban design and economical attitude concurred with the dynamic attitude towards the industrialization of the region held by the Bata company. Anonin Vítek had drawn up the initial plans. These plans were however dismissed by the planning inspector at the time called Bolsius, who advocated a traditionalist approach based on catholic values, preservation of the local appearance and the idea (or more to the point: ideal) of a local esthetic. 

The 1938 plan* by De Cassares for the new Batapolis (Bata City) in Best tries to marry rational land use and a favourable positioning to the sun with a garden city based street plan. This mathematical street plan owes -like most garden city layouts- to the then current trends in garden design.

Although the factory layout was based on a grid, as well as the first two rows of semi-detached houses Bolsius won in the end and a garden city esthetic was introduced. De Cassares translated this in his 1938 plan for Batapolis Best into a thoroughly modern (and rather emblematic) plan consisting of a main axis that formed the spine of a circular road intersected by roads ending in a close at both ends. Along these streets long rows of flat roofed semi-detached houses were envisaged. Around a central square that followed the old grid shops were drawn. Just below the pivot point of the factory grid and the tapering central parkway a church was imagined. Sadly only the northern most part of Batapolis would be built in Best. After 1945 housing for the workers was no longer provided by the Bata company but by a building society that developed Wilhelminadorp north of the Wilhelmina Canal. This location between the factory and the existing village of Best was deemed better suited for housing than the isolated Batapolis site. Thus Bata City never came to be. Now we find Batadorp (Bata Village) here in its stead. 

Here the original grid is superimposed on the never realized plan for Batapolis. A strip of green public garden separated the factory site from the housing. This is still the case today. Around the edges there was space for sporting grounds, a park or a farm. 

* the plan has been drawn based on a reproduction of the original land use plan and expanded from this.