Lars Thalian Backer

Lars Thalian Backer was a Norwegian architect who was a pioneer of modernism in Norwegian architecture during the 1920s. He was educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and also studied in London. He started his own practice in Oslo in 1921 and designed several notable buildings, such as the Skansen Restaurant, the Ekeberg Restaurant and the Horn Building. His Skansen Restaurant was the first modernist building in Norway, earning him lasting fame as a pioneer of Scandinavian Functionalism. He died at the age of 38 from a streptococcal infection. He was buried at Vestre gravlund in Oslo. Several members of his firm carried on his work and made names of their own, such as Frithjof Stoud Platou.