In the second half of the 1930s, a change in the concept of Bata houses took place at the Bata concern. The economy of construction was no longer the only decisive criterion. Practicality, comfort and the specific needs of the families who occupied the houses also came into play. The change was initiated primarily by Jan Antonin Bata, who took over the management of the concern from his late brother Tomáš (1932). The building department announced an international competition for residential houses, professional exhibitions on housing were held for the general public and experimental residential colonies were built.
One of these was a set of houses in the Lesní čtvrt' (Forest Quarter) in Zlín (1940), where there are several different types of houses. It included the Drofa II semi-detached house, which was completely outside the Bata typology of family houses. It features a high gabled roof with a dormer and an atypical layout. The question remains to what extent this was the architect's inventiveness or, on the contrary, the need to conform to the visual style of the architecture of Nazi Germany, which was required for newly approved buildings. The author of the new semi-detached house was the architect Miroslav Drofa, who contributed the most to the architectural and structural design of the Protectorate town of Zruč nad Sázavou - Bat'a.
There are nine semi-detached houses of this type, popularly called "Mysliveček", in the Baťa part of Zruč. They are located in the north-western half of the settlement, formerly called Dolní čtvrt' (Lower Quarter), in today's Okružní and Revoluční streets. Their construction began in June 1940 and ended in early 1941. It was built simultaneously with the construction of Drofa I and Florián houses. According to the original plans, the quarter of family houses was supposed to extend to Pohorie, but due to the construction ban by the occupation authorities, only the residential development of two streets remained.
Two layouts are recorded in the design of the Zlín prototype. The first variant has a living kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, toilet and pantry on the ground floor, and a second bedroom and attic on the first floor. The second variant has the kitchen separately on the ground floor instead of the bedroom, and the bathroom is moved upstairs, instead of which the laundry room is located on the ground floor. The apartment has only one bedroom upstairs. However, a third variant was designed for Zruč, which is more similar to the layout of the other local houses. In the main part of the house there is a living room (14.50 m²) and a separate kitchen (12 m²), and in the annex there is a bathroom on one side, a toilet and a pantry across the hall. All rooms had separate entrances, and a staircase led from the living room to the first floor, where a bedroom was located above the living room. From the corridor there was also a door to the terrace, which was really spacious for a semi-detached house (almost 10m²). A second bedroom was built in the remaining attic space, which was originally intended as an attic.
Like other types of houses, the Drofa II semi-detached house was partially underground with a concrete foundation. The upper structure was brick, including partitions, and the roof was covered with clay tiles. The houses were plainly plastered, with only framing around the windows, in some cases accentuated by white paint. Brick cladding was then used on the sides of the dormer. The floors in the living rooms were wooden, the floors in the auxiliary rooms were cement screed. The house included standard equipment, i.e. a boiler for boiling laundry in the basement, a bathtub, a sink and a spa stove in the bathroom, as well as a toilet and a sink. Of course there was a connection to the electricity and sewerage network.
Like other buildings in the Batau district of Zruč, these houses were also changing their appearance. At first, porches were added to cover the main entrance, later many of them were insulated, or even enlarged with an extension. However, some of the houses are still preserved in their original state.
