Modeta knitting factory

The national enterprise Modeta was established on 1 November 1949 by merging the Jihlava knitting factories Ehrlich & spol., O. Adam & L. Seidner and other smaller workshops. At the end of the 1960s, a decision was made to build a new combined factory where all local knitting production was to be moved from the obsolete plants. The design was developed by a team led by the architect Vojtěch Šplháček in Centroprojekt Gottwaldov and consisting of Eva Bánovská (architectural design of interiors), Miroslav Čechura (main designer), Josef Dvorský, Josef Vašina and Tomáš Kočiš (technologists), Antonín Jančařík (designer of the construction part), Otto Sadílek (designer of steel structures), and Bruno Růžička (engineering). Construction began with the first ceremonial dig on 15 May 1969, operation was partially started in 1975, and two years later, production was in full swing. The plant employed 1,500 workers. The assortment of goods consisted mainly of men's, women's and children's waistcoats, pullovers, gloves, scarves, caps and knitted fabrics for women's clothing of the Brno Modeta factory. The production capacity of the factory was four million pieces of outerwear per year and the total investment costs amounted to CZK 262 million.

The designers set the three-storey monoblock with a floor plan of 120 × 72 metres in the curve of the Jihlava River floodplain with a terrain break so that it did not disturb the panorama of the city when viewed from both close up and far away. This also helped to separate freight traffic and parking from the pedestrian routes and the entrance in the central part. The warehouses for raw materials and finished products were located on the first floor, warehouses for yarn, dyes and chemicals, a weaving room, adjusting room, central changing rooms and a canteen were on the second floor, and a knitting room, a cutting room, a clothing room, and a dyeing room on the top floor. The hall is divided by two transverse sections with auxiliary technical rooms, staircases, lifts, food vending machines, and sanitary facilities. The core of the main production building consists of a steel skeleton with a span of 6 × 6 metres on the first and second floors and 18 × 18 metres on the top floor. As was common in modern textile mills at that time, production required a constant microclimate, especially temperature and relative humidity, for technological reasons. According to the Ministry of Health guidelines, it complied with the requirements for windowless buildings (where suitable working conditions and lighting had to be provided for the staff), yet it has strip windows on the second and third floors to counteract the oppressive feeling of a closed environment. The shell consists of Siporex aerated concrete panels. For the façades of the adjacent office wing with laboratories (84 × 8.4 metres), the architects chose popular panels from Boletice. The interiors in the social areas were decorated with a ceramic relief in the dining room by Jiří Kemer and a non-woven tapestry in the entrance hall by Iva and Zbyněk Slavíček.

The complex also included an energy centre (water management with a water treatment plant, fuel oil heating plant, compressor station, and transformer station) and other smaller service facilities. The composition of the facility was complemented by the chimney of the fuel oil heating plant and the water tower, which were demolished after 2003. The current owner, who manufactures doors and door frames there today, added a new production hall to the existing buildings. The original idea of a complex textile mill was to be fulfilled by a new spinning mill and a separate building with the company headquarters, sample rooms, premises for fashion shows, and a medical centre. However, these have not been implemented.

JZ