Vilhelm Lauritzen (9 September 1894 – 22 December 1984) was a leading Danish modern architect, founder of the still active architectural firm Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, graduating in 1921. The following year he founded his own firm, Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter, and remained active in the firm until 1969. He received the Academy’s Gold Medal in 1926 throughout the 1920s he created a number of monumental designs in a classicist style.Towards the end of the decade he travelled in Central Europe and became acquainted with the latest trends in Functionalist architecture with its technical and structural innovations. This inspired him to create buildings reflecting grounded and restrained Modernism and it was with such buildings that he had his breakthrough.