Town in marching order

摘要

The architecture museum of theTU Munich is devoting a highly attractive exhibition to the "Czech Ford" and his factory town of Zlin. The show conveys the architectural achievements but also the totalitarian traits of the "shoe king", Tomas Bat'a.rnAlthough it remained a well-kept secret until the fall of the Iron Curtain, the town of Zh'n in Moravia has since been discovered as a "model city of modernism". The development of this small rural town into the headquarters of what was at the time Europe's largest shoe manufacturer is indeed unique in the history of modernism: in the economic, social and also architectural sense.