Publication details
The factory city of interwar period as a gendered space: the case of Zlín, Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | In the paper we would like to focus on the question of structure of public and private spaces in the city of Zlín. The modern history of the city is deeply connected with the development of the Bata shoe-company. The huge growth of the city in the 1920s and 1930s was influenced by the needs of the factory: the city had to provide enough living space for increasing number of Batas workers on one hand and all important facilities (in terms of health care, schools, consumption etc.) for them on the other. Zlín was rightly described as a “Bata´s city” because all these new facilities, as well as the cultural and social events in the city, were interconnected with the factory. We can say that the history of development of the modern Zlin is well known. The existing research has sufficiently described the social changes connected with the urban growth as well as the impact on the municipal politics and governance. Also the history of architectural development based strictly on the functionalist principles of urban planning is documented in details. Our contribution to the theme of interwar period of Zlín history is based on critical analysis of the structure of public and private spaces of the city. We would like to present the city as a deeply gendered space which embodies the traditional social distinctions and inequalities based on gender differentiation. This approach is possible due to the facts that (1) the intentions of the authors and architects of the city are well known (2) the functionalist structure of the city and of the semidetached houses works as a “tin” of these ideas. We will also take into consideration the possible differences between these ideas and the lived everydayness. We will analyze the material (main square Labour Square and its surroundings, semidetached workers´ houses) and visual (photographs, films) data. |