Zlín Has a Digital Twin. It Will Enable You to Celebrate the Anniversary of the University with Us
29. April 2021Tomas Bata University in Zlín has given itself an unconventional gift to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of TBU – a unique microsite jenamdvacet.cz describing the story of its development and showing how this institution has changed the face of the town. What catches the eye at first is, above all, the design of the microsite. The real-time 3D graphics used enables to depict the wider town centre without the need for any installation. Thus, you will identify the landmarks of Zlín, in particular the TBU buildings, at a glance.
The attractive design, however, comprises contents of equal importance. Visitors to the site can freely look around the map and find the most important milestones in the history of TBU, or they can choose the more comfortable “sightseeing tour”. “We created texts about the history of the University and collected an extensive gallery of archival photographs. Thanks to our long-term cooperation with the Czech Television, we were able to supplement the photos with reports from the archive of the Czech Television. In this way, we described some of the many important moments and milestones that, from 2001 to today, have formed and are still forming what our University is,” said Andrea Kadlčíková, TBU Director of Marketing and Communications.
“Unfortunately, we cannot celebrate the important anniversary of TBU this year as much as we would like to due to the pandemic, therefore, we want to share our joy with the general public at least in this digital form. Although our university is young, so much has happened here over the twenty years, that it would be shame not to share this story,” said Prof. Ing. Vladimír Sedlařík, Rector of TBU. “We firmly believe that we will be able to meet our colleagues and TBU students in the renovated University Assembly Hall in autumn,” said Prof. Sedlařík.
Graduates of the University, Pavel Novák and Michal Ščuglík were responsible for the design and coding of the site. “The word microsite evokes something small, but nothing could be further from the truth in this case. It took more than a thousand hours to design a model of the town. It took almost 2 weeks to prepare some more complex buildings, for example the Faculty of Applied Informatics, to be displayed correctly on the website,” Pavel Novák describes how demanding the work was. In the following academic year, both successful FMC alumni will transfer their knowledge as teachers within the newly established specialization in Game Design at this Faculty.
Tomas Bata University in Zlín is commemorating the 20th anniversary of its establishment this year. It was established as of 1 January 2001 by detaching the Faculty of Technology, Faculty of Management and Economics and the Halls of Residence and Refectory from the Brno University of Technology. The Act on the Establishment of TBU was signed by the erstwhile President Václav Havel in November 2000. The inauguration ceremony of the University and its first Rector, Prof. Petr Sáha, was held on 16 May 2001.
