FRoM SPonTAnEoUS To DESIGnED: SCEnARIoS FoR oPEn SPACE ConVERSIon In A HISToRICAL Town CEnTRE

The Department of Landscape Architecture at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra was commissioned by the Municipality of Nové Zámky in 2018 to elaborate a landscape architectural study with different design scenarios for a publicly accessible open green space at the boundary of the historical town centre. The open space is located at the site of one of the six former bastions of the 16 century Renaissance fortress that has not been preserved. The introductory paragraph is dedicated to history of fortification landscapes in Slovakia and Central Europe from ancient to modern times. It elaborates on the mutual relationship and diverse urban design situations between fortification systems and open spaces, both from the historical and contemporary perspective. The design setting is historically contextualised by a brief insight into the history of the Nové Zámky fortress.


Introduction
The Department of Landscape Architecture at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra was commissioned by the Municipality of Nové Zámky in 2018 to elaborate a landscape architectural study with different design scenarios for a publicly accessible open green space at the boundary of the historical town centre. The open space is located at the site of one of the six former bastions of the 16 th century Renaissance fortress that has not been preserved. The introductory paragraph is dedicated to history of fortification landscapes in Slovakia and Central Europe from ancient to modern times. It elaborates on the mutual relationship and diverse urban design situations between fortification systems and open spaces, both from the historical and contemporary perspective. The design setting is historically contextualised by a brief insight into the history of the Nové Zámky fortress.

From ancient to modern: A brief history of fortifications in today's Slovakia
Fortifications formed European cities for centuries. Limes Romanus (Roman Limes), an extensive fortified 5,000 km long borderline of the Roman Empire that reached its greatest extent in the 2 nd century AD was perhaps one of the most famous fortified frontiers in human history. A part of this borderline stretched along the river Danube and led for instance through Vindobona (now Vienna, Austria), Gerulata (now Rusovce, Slovakia), Kelemantia (now Iža, Slovakia), Brigetio (now Komárom, Hungary) and Aquincum (now Budapest, Hungary) or the partly preserved Carnuntum in today's Lower Austria that used to be the capital of Upper Pannonia with some 70,000 inhabitants (Bruckmüller, 2001;Institute of Monuments Preservation, 2002). Another famous part of the Limes was built on the orders of Emperor Hadrian around 122 AD. The 118 km long Hadrian's Wall (now in the United Kingdom) was the northernmost limit of the Roman province of Britannia (UNESCO, 2008 (Gráfel, 1999), the Nové Zámky (Castellum Novum) Fortress was being built from 1573 to 1580 and the Leopoldov (Leopoldina/Leopoldstatt) Fortress was built in 1660s after the siege of Nové Zámky (Pisoň, 1973). Fortresses in Komárno and Leopoldov have been preserved until today. The one in Nové Zámky was demolished in 1724-1725 ( Figure 1). Only the urban design structure -the shape of the former fortress and the orthogonal road system are still readable from maps and aerial views. Similar fortresses to the one in Nové Zámky have been partly or completely preserved across Europe, for instance in Karlovac (Croatia), Bourtange and Naarden (both in the Netherlands). After the Ottoman invasions, most of the medieval and modern fortresses have partly or completely lost their strategic importance and protection function, however, they have been rediscovered in later war times.  (Navarro et al., 2017). Medieval castles usually had enclosed gardens -Hortus Conclusus, while medieval monasteries had enclosed, centrally located rectangular and orthogonally organised Eden Gardens, as well as orchard cemeteries and production gardens with herbs and vegetables (Wiede, 2016  Nonetheless, whether preserved, reused or demolished, fortifications formed urban landscapes across most of European cities for centuries and have led to the establishment of typologically diverse urban landscapes -unique historic sites such as the one in Komárno, modern planned boulevards with public buildings and parks such as the one in Vienna, restricted areas like the fortress prison in Leopoldov or everyday landscapes with a specific, yet not distinctively articulated historical legacy such as the one in Nové Zámky.

Historical contextualisationthe rise and fall of the nové Zámky Fortress
The   (1529-1858), a wide open field that served as a protection zone and later was used by the inhabitants as an urban open space from the 16 th to the mid-19 th century. In 1857, a decision was made by Emperor Franz Joseph I. to demolish the fortifications and establish a boulevard. As many as 85 planning projects were submitted in 1858 for the new Ringstraße. This large-scale urbandesign intervention enabled the construction of important public buildings (e.g. the state opera, the museums of natural history and art history, the parliament, the city B A Plants in Urban areas and landscaPe Neuhäusel/Érsekújvár) was built between 1573 and 1580 based on the project of Italian architects Ottavio and Giulio Baldigara. The construction works were led by Friedrich Zierotin. The fortress had a hexagonal ground plan with six bastions at its vertices, an orthogonal road system, a centrally located rectangular square, two gates (Viennese and Esztergom Gates) and an extensive underground tunnel system. The fortress was surrounded by a water moat fed by the river Nitra. At the time of its construction, it was the most advanced state-of-the-art Renaissance fortress in the empire. With the destruction of the fortress, a century and a half lasting strategic function of Nové Zámky ended. The water moat was destructed in 1822. The original urban design of the fotress -the hexagonal shape and the orthogonal road system -has been preserved until today.

The challenge of designing a former fortress landscape
Re-designing open spaces in historical town centres with unique urban landscapes represents a real challenge for landscape architects and urban designers. In these historical places, many time layers have heaped up, which should open a completely new field of cooperation, while exploring the boundaries of the landscape architecture profession and integrating landscape archaeology that approaches human history and cultural monuments at a rather complex landscape scale (Fairclough, 2012), as well as historical geography that acts as a bridge between historical and cultural sciences and helps uncovering the essential time-depth of any landscape that is to be developed by landscape architects (Kleefeld and Schenk, 2012;Hunt, 2016).
Design studios provide the opportunity to implement project-based and hands-on teaching in landscape architecture (Jørgensen et al., 2019). The diversity of project and space typologies is very wide, reaching from public to private, from large-scale to small-scale, from urban to rural (Halajová et al., 2018b). Previous design studios in Nitra were dealing for instance with hospital open spaces (Halajová et al., 2019), environmental education landscapes , primary school open spaces (Feriancová, 2014), a public park at a medieval castle, open spaces of a university campus or rural open spaces in several villages and small towns, just to mention some of the most recent projects (Halajová et al., 2018b). Currently, the open space has a rather informal character. It is used by the public to shorten everyday routes between the city centre, the bus station and the train station in the North and a large residential zone in the South of the historical town centre. The area is currently covered by grassland and spontaneous woody vegetation creating a vast, yet informal urban green space in the city centre with a great potential for creating a high-quality open green space for the citizens and visitors of Nové Zámky. There is also a small building of "Astrokabinet" with a small-scale amphitheatre for observing the dark sky and organising events in the summer.

Material and methods
The assignment of the Public Space Design Studio (winter term 2018/2019) was to develop three different design scenarios by three student working groups, supervised by Dr. Attila Tóth (Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture SUA Nitra).
The methodological process of the design studio followed a standard studio methodology as defined by Halajová et al. (2018a). It can be divided into three main working steps: in Urban areas and Landscape inventory of woody plants, and collection of site-specific data (Deming and Swaffield, 2011) were applied. The field work included the method of walking the site with local stakeholders (Van den Brink et al., 2017) and discussing positive and negative aspects, potentials and expectations.
2. Analytical work -within this step the data collected and documented on site and materials gained from online search (e.g. the current Land Use Plan of Nové Zámky, maps, texts and historical pictures) were further processed within seven thematic analyses -2.1) analysis of wider relations ( Figure 4A), 2.2) functional and spatial analysis, 2.3) landscape analysis, 2.4) urban-design, architecture and transport analysis, 2.5) compositional analysis, 2.6.1) vegetation analysis -inventory of woody plants ( Figure  4B), 2.6.2) vegetation analysis -thematic layer maps, and 2.7) historical analysis (Stahlschmidt et al., 2017;Kuczman, 2018).
3. Design work -the design process itself provided opportunities for further research of the site, such as identifying urban-design and compositional relations or developing site-

Plants
in Urban areas and landscaPe specific solutions following the conception of Research by Design as defined by Deming and Swaffield (2011) and Van den Brink et al. (2017).
In the design process, theoretical groundings of function and form generation (Herrington, 2017) and other open-space design principles (Štěpánková et al., 2012) were applied. The design process included two direct interactions with local stakeholders from the municipality of Nové Zámky in the form of 3.1) interim critique and feedback, and 3.2) final presentation and feedback.

Results and discussion
The results of the Public Space Design Studio 2018/2019 consist of three different design studies/ scenarios for public open green space conversion in the town centre of Nové Zámky. Two working groups developed their spatial composition based on the existing urban structure of the historical town centre ( Figure 5). One of the working groups extended the surrounding roads and streets and used this layout as their compositional framework ( Figure 5A). The other group extended two of the orthogonal streets of the historical town centre and indicated the former bastion in the form of a circular walking trail with information Tóth, A. | From Spontaneous to Designed: Scenarios for Open Space Conversion in a Historical Town Centre Plants in Urban areas and landscaPe | 2020 | pp. 19-27 in Urban areas and Landscape panels on the six former bastions ( Figure 5B), creating thereby an allusive reference to the former bastion.
The third working group applied a different approach. Their form generation followed a rather symbolic approach and made reference to the existing "Astrokabinet" through designing the central circular walking trail in the shape of the Auriga Constellation ( Figure 6A). This symbology makes its way from the conceptual thinking down to design details and artistic site elements inspired by famous constellations, asterisms and stars -the Big Dipper/ Plough as part of Ursa Major, the Auriga, Cassiopeia, Lyra, Ursa Minor, and Alfa Ursae Minoris (α UMi) ( Figure 6A

Conclusion
The Public Space Design Studio 2018/2019 has provided the municipality of Nové Zámky with three different design scenarios for converting the informal open green space in the town centre with prevailing spontaneous and invasive woody vegetation into an attractive public open green space. The different design scenarios serve for the municipality as a useful material for internal and public discussions on the future of this open space. From the scientific perspective, the design studio provided a great opportunity to implement landscape theory and design principles in the teaching process and to conduct an interesting research by design on fortress landscapes and open space conversion. The new knowledge that was obtained within this process includes knowledge on the importance and specificities of fortress landscapes across Europe. The most important results are represented by three design scenarios. The scientific significance of the work consists in furthering research in landscape architecture through design in Slovak conditions. The practical significance of the project consists in the implementation of project-and problem-based teaching and providing landscape architecture students with practical knowledge and skills and the opportunity to work on real sites, deal with real challenges and interact with local stakeholders. A recommendation for the city of Nové Zámky would be to initiate discussions with elected representatives of the local government and the public, to proceed to the project design phase and subsequently to the implementation of one of the scenarios. Further research could be geared towards exploring other medieval and modern fortress landscapes across Slovakia, to verify the applicability of the developed design approaches in other local conditions.