The planetary-scale mobility and displacement of populations marking the Anthropocene have led to the proliferation of refugee camps as political and spatial responses to emergencies. Originally conceived as temporary facilities to provide immediate protection and control, the underlying notions of containment and temporality in refugee camps raise numerous paradoxes and questions regarding the political and humanitarian motives behind them, as well as the quality of spatial responses. However, the spatial dynamics of these camps, particularly their relationship with the ground, have not been thoroughly examined. Accordingly, this study aims to elaborate on the spatiality of refugee camps as liminal landscapes of displacement, adopting a rights-based perspective in which landscape is understood as a fundamental structure of justice in meeting the refugees’ basic rights. In this context, six refugee camps are analysed regarding landscape dynamics, including ground, infrastructural and ecological relations. The findings demonstrate that the right-to-landscape perspective enhances the multiscalar and process-oriented understanding of refugee camps, benefiting both the refugees and host communities.

When did the ‘modern garden’ appear? Studying the origin of this form of landscape design not only contributes to theory but also highlights the practical value of garden projects and, for the first time, recognizes the landscape architect as a professional. Identifying, analysing and critically interpreting the principles of the modern garden thus recognizes the importance of the professional skills of the landscape architect in contemporary times, and helps to communicate, highlight and reinforce the strategic contribution that he or she makes to our landscapes and cities. This article aims to demonstrate that the origin of the modern garden, generally attributed to the twentieth century, can be observed in the second half of the nineteenth century, when a new paradigm, the jardin paysager moderne, introduced by Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps (1824-1873) and subsequently applied by the scholars of his école (E. Deny, A. and P. Péan, J. Vacherot), came to the fore in France. Based on innovative and revolutionary principles, such as the rationalization of the design process or the adoption of a comprehensive approach to the project, the new model laid the foundations for the modern garden and landscape art.

This article examines the influence of Ian McHarg’s curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) on the professions of landscape and architecture in Scotland. The article proposes that by rallying his Scottish contacts and graduates as he embarked on his ambitious new department in America, McHarg set in motion an ‘imaginative connectedness’ with Scotland that would persist for decades beyond his emigration. Examples of his ideas and influence in Scotland are shown here in the work of three of McHarg’s earliest students, David Neave Skinner (1928–1989), James Shepherd Morris (1931–2006) and Robert Russell Steedman (b. 1929), each of whom went on to have national influence on landscape policy and Scottish modernist architecture. The diverse ways in which McHarg’s teachings and wider approaches impacted these three graduates is shown here in their projects at Penn and later, in combination with continued correspondence with McHarg throughout their careers. The description of the multiple dimensions of McHarg’s influence on these ambitious individuals is derived from research of multiple archives, project and policy records in tandem with contemporary interviews. With a focus on his early pedagogy, the research highlights multifarious ways in which McHarg influenced the profession of landscape architecture beyond his most well-known legacies.

The garden street (rue-jardin) project was carried out by the City of Bordeaux as part of France’s Programme National de Requalification des Quartiers Anciens Dégradés (PNRQAD, 2009-2017), and illustrates an experiment in the development of public spaces suitable for users. To transform streets into spaces of sociability and collective life, the municipality is seeking to make them into gardens for residents, who are invited to be their gardeners. This article seeks to analyse to what extent gardening may be a vector for appropriating street life. It looks at how the municipality’s intentions actually translate into the public space design, as well as into measures to develop gardening practices. The article also aims to compare and contrast municipal objectives with the way in which residents take the opportunity of intervening in the development of public spaces. It shows that designing changes to streets is not in itself sufficient to bring about change. Gardening may in fact lead to varied and antagonistic ways of appropriating streets. It can contribute to the collective upkeep and the embellishment of public spaces, but also to expressions of individualism and the extension of private domestic spaces. Nevertheless, in a time when we are mainly considering technical solutions, such as planting vegetation or reducing the urban soil sealing to adapt cities to climate change, the garden street project shows the need to think about the ecological transition of cities in terms of its social and landscape dimensions.