The late Sonja Bata pursued her passion for architecture and the built environment through the revitalization of the town of Batawa, the former factory town located 175 km east of Toronto on the Trent River.
In 1939, at the onset of WWII, the Bata family transplanted their shoe empire, including 120 workers and their families, from Czechoslovakia to Canada, establishing a company town that would become a prototype for subsequent Bata operations around the world.
Bata Shoe Factory – 1955
The factory was decommissioned in 2000 and sold to a plastics factory. However, after the death of her husband in 2008, Bata repurchased the entire 1,500-acre site, with the objective of reinventing the town once more as a model of sustainable development. The first installment and centrepiece of this vision, completed after Bata?s death in 2019, is the ambitious adaptive re-use and conversion of the former manufacturing facility into a mixed-use residential, commercial and community building with a light environmental footprint and a strong social mandate. Photo by Scott Norsworthy
Designed by Quadrangle as Architect of Record, with Dubbeldam Architecture + Design as Collaborating Design Architect, the modernist-style factory now encompasses 47 rental residential units of varying sizes on the upper three storeys, with commercial and retail amenities below.

These include a children?s daycare with an outdoor playground, an exhibition/community space, mul...