Lars Sonck

Lars Eliel Sonck (10 August 1870 – 14 March 1956) was a Finnish architect. He graduated from Helsinki Polytechnic Institute in 1894 and immediately won a major design competition for a church in Turku, St Michael's Church, ahead of many established architects. The church was designed in the prevailing neo-Gothic style. However, Sonck's style would soon go through a dramatic change, in the direction of Art Nouveau and National Romanticism that was moving through Europe at the end of the 19th century. During the 1920s, Sonck would also design a number of buildings in the emerging Nordic Classicism style.