The scale and innovations of American examples were emulated to a limited extent in the more traditional countries of Europe. The Taylorist office started to appear at a smaller scale just as miniature skyscrapers were beginning to be built in some European cities. Many artists and architects involved in the European modern movement admired the modern and rationalist American examples but lacked the resources or opportunity to carry out their ideas. Mies van der Rohe’s visionary conceptual projects of the 1920s for crystalline glass towers would find fruition many years later in the corporate architecture of post-war America. In his more rationalist ‘concrete office building’ project, stacked concrete trays holding work areas were lit by continuous ribbon windows. As in Wright’s office buildings, the occupants have no view out to the surroundings as the windows were above head height, the space below the window being used for storage cabinets.

Le Corbusier's glass curtain wall project for government offices in Brazil of 1936 expressed a more open ideal; the literal and organisational transparency of a modern democratic state.

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