On 8 August 1938 the first excavation began on the fields of Šimonovany: the Baťa shoe company of Zlín was building a plant, and around the plant a whole town. Baťa did this deliberately — works and workers’ housing were designed as one object: flat-roofed red brick on a concrete frame, standardised family houses in rows, and between the housing and the factory gate a school, a hotel, a cinema and a community house. The plan came out of Baťa’s own building department in Zlín; it is usually credited to the architect Jiří Voženílek, while the town itself credits Vladimír Karfík, who ran that department. Within weeks of that first spade Czechoslovakia began to come apart at Munich, so the town was finished inside a state its builders had not foreseen.8. augusta 1938 sa na šimonovianskych poliach začalo kopať: zlínska obuvnícka firma Baťa tu stavala závod a okolo neho celé mesto. Baťa to robil zámerne — fabrika a bývanie pre robotníkov boli navrhnuté ako jeden celok: červená tehla s plochou strechou na betónovom skelete, typizované rodinné domy v radoch a medzi bývaním a bránou závodu škola, hotel, kino a spoločenský dom. Plán vzišiel z Baťovho stavebného oddelenia v Zlíne; obyčajne sa pripisuje architektovi Jiřímu Voženílkovi, samo mesto však uvádza Vladimíra Karfíka, ktorý toto oddelenie viedol. Pár týždňov po prvom výkope sa Československo začalo v Mníchove rozpadať — mesto teda dokončili v štáte, s ktorým jeho stavitelia nerátali.
