networked utopia: the architecture and urbanism of the Bata Shoe Company satellite cities

Ph.D. in Architecture, Sobresaliente cum Laude (2/2016)ETS de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Promotor: Luis Fernández-Galiano Committee: Simón Marchán Fiz (UNED), José María Ezquiaga (ETSAM), Brent D. Ryan (MIT), Andres Lepik (TU München), & Ginés Garrido (ETSAM)
External reviewers: Carola Hein & Han Meyer (TU Delft)

In Networked Utopia, my dissertation, I studied the transnational urbanism of the Bata Shoe Company satellite towns. For that, I did unprecedented fieldwork and archival research (20 towns, 13 countries) funded by Harvard’s Druker Fellowship and Fundación La Caixa. My thesis showed how Bata’s organizational practices translated into built form. I argued that in the process, local contexts in turn altered corporate practices. I also considered corporate design through institutional theory, to understand why specific architectures are adopted by multinationals. I concluded that more knowledge on the spatial production of corporations would allow reimagining agency towards desirable outcomes for workers and society.

Outcomes of this research have been published in the Journal of Urban Research, and in the conference proceedings of: the 2018 IPHS Conference (peer reviewed); 20th Century New Towns: Archetypes and Uncertainties; and The Architecture and Urban Planning of the Bata Concern as one of the Modernization Factors in Slovakia. I have presented this work in invited lectures at Harvard (2013(1), (2)), TU Delft (2015), and Bezalel Academy (2017); also in scientific conferences of the International Planning History Society (IPHS) and ESAP. 

This work received the  2018 Anthony Sutcliffe Dissertation Award of the IPHS, recognizing the best thesis in planning history of 2016-17.

Related publications:

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2020),“Urbanism as Myth and Ceremony: Social Legitimacy and the Development of the Bata Shoe Company Satellite Towns (1929-1935),” in Articulo - Journal of Urban Research 48, special issue on Commodity Flows and Urban Spaces. ︎︎︎︎

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2016), “Beyond the Company: Intended and Unintended Legacies of Modern Industrial Urban Planning and Design. The Case of the Bata Shoe Company Satellite Towns (1929-2015),” in International Planning History Society Proceedings, v. 17, n. 3, June 2016, pp. 29-40.︎︎︎︎

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2015): Madrid. 514 pp. ︎︎︎︎

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2015),“Co sa Stalo s Bat’ovými Mestami: Rozmanité Osudy Priemyselných Satelitných Miest Koncernu Bat’a” [Whatever Happened to the Bata Towns], in Klára Kubicková, ed, Zvorník zo Sympózia Architektúra A Územné Plánovanie Koncernu Bata Ako Jeden Z Faktorov Modernizácie Slovenska [Symposium Proceedings The Architecture and Urban Planning of the Bata Concern as one of the Modernization Factors in Slovakia], pp. 29-47. ︎︎︎︎

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2014), “Between global turbulences and local manners: the multiple lives of the Bata Shoe Company satellite towns,” in Marcolin, Paolo and Joaquim Flores, eds, Proceedings of the International Conference 20th Century New Towns: Archetypes and Uncertainties, May 2014, pp. 277-297.︎︎︎︎

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2013), “The parallel lives of a modernist imagination: the urban legacy of the Bata Shoe Company satellite towns,” in Atlantis: platform for urbanism 23.4, June 2013, pp. 28-21.

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2013), “Unfolding a Modern Palimpsest: Batanagar, 1934-2013,”in Domus [India] 27, April 2013, pp. 100-105.

Muñoz Sanz, V. (2012), “Batawa: the company town,” in On Site Review 27, spring 2012, issue on Rural Urbanism, pp. 32-33.