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).