In the early 1930s, a Czech shoe salesman, Tomás Bat’a, came to this outpost of Thurrock, and decided to turn it into a factory town. Taking his Bauhaus-inspired headquarters in Zlin as a starting point, he had developed self-functioning small cities, in the same image, around the globe. Eighty years on, the seeds of his work are still here: the houses for managers and workers, the social facilities and shops. Many have been altered in the decades that followed, however; many are broken-down, shuttered and spent. Nevertheless, all of them still reveal the contours of an idealistic age, a long-lost vision living on in walls, joints and structures.
Jude Rogers
Vanishing Points