Prof. Dr. Iris Lauterbach

Honorary Professor at TUM since 2012

Field

History of Garden Art

Career

Professor Lauterbach studied art history, French and Italian philology at the universities of Mainz, Pavia (Collegio Ghislieri) and Paris (Paris IV). Her dissertation (1985) dealt with French gardens in the second half of the 18th century. She has widely published on European garden history from the 16th to 20th centuries, architecture, urbanism and the visual arts in National Socialism. Since 1986 she has been a member of the Research Group for Historic Gardens of the German Society of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (DGGL) and since 1998 a member of the Research Group for Orangeries in Germany.
She is interested in the design and realization of historic gardens and urban design from an artistic and technical point of view, also concerning the use of plants. Her fields of research are the transfer of historic gardens to other media, such as illustrations in books, in the graphic arts, in painting, and in cinema. She communicates the history and theory of landscape architecture from Antiquity to the 20th century, and a knowledge of the traditions and historic forms of gardens and urban design which is basic to the academic formation of young landscape architects.

Functions

  • Member of the research department of the Central Institute of Art History (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte), Munich (since 1991)
  • Postgraduate fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome (Max Planck Institute) (1989-1991)
  • Assistant teacher at the Institute of Christian Archaeology, Freiburg University (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität) (1987-1989)
  • Assistant curator at the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin) (1986-1987)