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.