Apple

Designed by Norman Foster, this environmentally friendly, ring-shaped headquarters for Apple looks like a spaceship from the future.

Known as the Googleplex, the search engine giant’s campus in Mountain View, Calif., features a series of solar panels covering the rooftops of eight buildings and two solar carports capable of producing 1.6 megawatts of electricity.Photo credit: Sebastian Bergmann

The Chinese online gaming company turned to Thom Mayne for its futuristic main campus in Shanghai. Photo Credit: Iwan Baan

It may not win any prizes for architectural daring, but Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters employs numerous green technologies, including using 100 percent recycled paper.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, the six-story building in Cambridge, Mass., features an open, atelier-style, adaptable architecture specifically designed to provide the flexibility to respond to emerging research priorities.

The company is striving to achieve LEED Platinum-level certification for the colorful San Francisco campus (this is a rendering), which will comprise about 2 million square feet of office space when completed.

The high-tech healthcare provider’s global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, features futuristic research labs by Frank Gehry, among others.

At the social networking giant’s future Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, which includes the construction of five buildings, employees will also have access to a BBQ pit and a bike doctor.

The Sony Center complex in Berlin is actually a mix of offices, stores, restaurants and entertainment complexes, all housed beneath a stunning canopy of white sails. Photo Credit: Andreas Tille

IIT’s Chicago campus drew worldwide attention when master modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe planned and built it in the 1940s. Architectural feats from Rem Koolhaas and Helmut Jahn (of Sony Center fame) add fresh luster. Photo credit: Jeremy Atherton