Baťa's skyscraper is an architectural gem of Zlín

Prague - Ten years ago, on October 30, 2004, the reconstructed so-called Baťa skyscraper was ceremoniously opened in Zlín. One of the highlight works of interwar architecture in Czechoslovakia currently serves as the seat of the regional office.
      The project for the seventeen-story administrative building of the Baťa shoe company was developed in the mid-1930s by architect Vladimír Karfík. At the time of its completion, in 1938, this building, with its more than 77 meters, was the tallest structure in the then Czechoslovakia. It is all the more remarkable that its reinforced concrete structure was built by forty workers in just 160 days.
      Each floor of the fully air-conditioned building housed large open-plan offices measuring 80 by 20 meters. Each of them accommodated around two hundred clerks, serviced by four express elevators, supplemented by a paternoster, a freight elevator, and a visitor lift. However, the real technical novelty was the director's office located in the elevator. He had access not only to such essentials as a telephone and electrical outlets but, somewhat surprisingly, also to a sink with hot and cold water and drainage in the elevator.
      The building survived the German occupation and, with certain structural modifications, the Communist era. From August 2003 to October of the following year, it underwent extensive reconstruction costing 630 million crowns. The building, which housed the regional and tax office after the renovation, was awarded the Grand Prix of the Association of Architects in the reconstruction category.