Elevator-Office.

bat'a's company’s headquarters - photo from the exhibition: "Zlín - Modellstadt der Moderne" at the Pinakothek der Moderne (München)

The Bat'a Shoes company, founded in 1894 by the entrepreneur Tomás Bat’a and his stepbrother Jan Antonín, was sitatued in Zlín, in the east of the Czech Republic. The brothers Bat’a combined clever entrepreneurship, mass production of shoes and social experiment. The town Zlín got a laboratory for communal life and work: a Fordian city.

elevator office - photo from the exhibition: "Zlín - Modellstadt der Moderne" at the Pinakothek der Moderne (München)

At the company’s headquarters (erected by Vladimír Karfík, a former Le Corbusier assistant) Mr. Bat'a worked in an room-sized elevator office, from which he was able to move between stories to observe his workers. The first “lift-office”. In 1931 the Bat'a plants were turning out 150,000 pairs of shoes daily (latest available figures, source: time)
photo from the exhibition: "Zlín - Modellstadt der Moderne"

Bata is still one of the largest shoe manufacture in the world.

model of the elevator office - photo from the exhibition: "Zlín - Modellstadt der Moderne" at the Pinakothek der Moderne (München)

Zlín - The Model Town of Modernism
19.11.2009 -21.02.2010 PINAKOTHEK DER MODERNE ARCHITEKTUR