Wallander's proposal expressed a bold modernity and was met with great interest. The truly radical touch was his call for a pair of tall buildings of the sort that were becoming known as skyscrapers. These would resolve the problem of how to elegantly connect the two levels that had been formed after blasting a passage through the ridge.

The new plan envisaged a curved, commercial thoroughfare with the towers as its climax. All the buildings would be uniformly designed -- six stories high with arcades at street level. Although detailing was entrusted to several architects, the buildings between Norrlandsgatan and the Kungstornen are still remarkably uniform, with plaster and granite façades in the Scandinavian neoclassicism of the 1920s.

Centrumhuset (The Centrum Building) was built at the corner of two new streets -- Kungsgatan and Sveavägen -- a crossroads in the developing business life of the city. The building includes a wide flight of outdoor steps which connect to the viaduct crossing Kungsgatan.

While Centrumhuset has an interior system of iron pillars which allows inner walls to be easily added or moved, Johansson preferred that the outer walls be load-bearing brick. He also liked using brick for its excellent insulating capabilities. And, he was just as enamored of the beautiful patina that brick obtains with time. The windows are placed at regular intervals because the building was designed for mixed use and he wished to meet the varied demands of shops and offices on all floors. He described the building's surface as giving "the impression of a cloth discreet in pattern."

The expressively monumental Kungstornen, or tower buildings, house shops at street level; the rest is office space. Each originally had a restaurant at the top. The towers are built of reinforced concrete with mica-rendered façades.

The first European skyscrapers, they became for many a symbol of the modern metropolis. Wallander himself designed the North tower (1919-24); the south tower was finished in 1925 according to the plans by Ivar Callmander.

Johansson's drawing of Centrumhuset and Wallander's tower, shows his consummate draftsmanship.

Johansson attempted to bring as much light as possible into the interior of the building. The plan of the third floor at left shows the building's three courtyards.

Johansson consistently followed a chosen line which he developed in a highly personal way. Early on he adopted the Ostbergian brick style connected with the Danish and Northwestern European tradition. The modernist tendency in his buildings is also clearly related to German and Dutch Expressionism. Pure Neoclassicism is hardly present in his works; he also took exception to pure Functionalism. By the 1950s he was still adhering to the Deutscher Werkbund that was his early inspiration.

He wrote, "An architect's work is, and should be influenced by the general trend in design obtaining in his day, but the creator has all the more reason to be satisfied if he has succeeded in giving it to some extent the stamp of agelessness. It may be of value for a stranger to see some specimens of architecture in a country which, like Sweden, has been comparatively unaffected by the psychoses of war and post-war periods among the masses. Then again, ideas which have been derived from abroad and transplanted in a small country may develop definitely national characteristics which often prove of interest to the original givers. The interest evinced in Swedish architecture, especially in English-speaking countries, is in great measure due to the undisturbed development which Swedish architecture has enjoyed and mainly for absence in design of marked extremes."

Hundreds of figures decorate the window surrounds of Centrumhuset, each entirely different from the others. They add warmth and humor on an intimate inspection of the building. The figures, depicting the young and old, people at work and at play, from all walks of life, reflect Johansson's humanity and concerns for the well-being of community life.

Many of Cyrillus Johansson's buildings, with their conspicuous hipped and curved roofs crowning solid brick volumes, show the influence of Chinese architecture. This is one of the most distinctive features of his architecture.

The Chinese influence is particularly clear in the Värmsland Regional Museum in Karlstad (1926-29). The plan could be said to be a paraphrase of the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, with an "enfilade" around a rectangular inner court. But its Chinese character is manifested by the oxblood coloring of the courtyard, with its sgrafitto decorations, and portico of wood columns, as well as by the constrained, ochre exterior with its large central niche and gently curving copper roofs. Inspired by a good friend, China expert Osvald Sirén, Johansson also developed a passion for traditional Chinese construction methods. Less accentuated, but similar Chinese traits are present in the Centrum Building.