Belonging is not accidental – it is designed. This panel explores how architecture shapes belonging, not just by providing shelter, but by structuring everyday life.
Using Bata Village at East Tilbury as a starting point, it examines how modernist ideals, industrial ambition, and community planning created a distinctive model of living. Historian Milan Balaban situates the settlement within the global story of Bata cities, while architectural historian Gillian Darley reflects on its significance for British modernism. Mick Pinion from the Bata Heritage Centre brings a local and heritage perspective on East Tilbury’s development and legacy, and architect Ondřej Chybík discusses contemporary lessons for urban planning. Chaired by John Tusa, the conversation links historical experiments to today’s questions of development, identity and place-making.
SPEAKERS:
Sir John Tusa is a British arts administrator, author, journalist and former presenter of the BBC’s Newsnight. Born in Czechoslovakia, he moved to East Tilbury in 1939, where his father was Managing Director of the British Bata Shoe Company factory. He is Co-Chairman of the European Union Youth Orchestra and was previously Managing Director of the BBC World Service and Director of the Barbican Arts Centre. He is the author of On Board, Making a Noise and On Creativity.
Gillian Darley OBE is a widely published writer and historian who was President of the Twentieth Century Society from 2014 until 2021. She first visited East Tilbury, in search of the Bata industrial village, in the early 1970s, when researching and photographing her first book, Villages of Vision (1975, reissued 2007). Ever since she has returned at regular Intervals. The village featured in her most recent book, Excellent Essex (2019). In 2024, Gillian achieved a longed-for aim, a visit to Zlin.
Milan Balaban is a historian specialising in business, economic, and industrial history, with a focus on the global Bata Company network. He is a researcher at the Information Centre Bata, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, and a lecturer at Palacký University in Olomouc. His work examines industrialisation, company towns, and corporate mobility in Central and Eastern Europe. He has published several books, including Bata across Continents (2022), and articles in leading journals, and lectures internationally on multinational enterprises and industrial modernity.
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Part of the London Festival of Architecture.
The talk is an accompanying event to the exhibition Desire to Create: Baťa’s Architecture of Belonging, presented at the Vitrínka Gallery, running from 9 April to 12 June 2026.
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