The infamous offices in this list are all well known for the notoriously shady activities that occurred within them, that is except for one shining example, The Cabinet War Rooms. The remaining offices have a dark and sinister history having served as headquarters for some of the most brutal regimes and criminal empires the world has ever seen.

Several of the offices below are so steeped in history that they have been maintained as museums for future generations of tourists to enjoy. Others have simply been preserved as memorials to the monstrosities that have occurred and those that have suffered within their walls. The rest of the offices explored here have been knocked down, built over and lost to the passage of time.

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The credit crunch, a financial crisis that began in Wall Street just two years ago, has spread throughout the corporate world, bankrupting companies and terminating countless jobs as it goes. The rate of job losses has been monumental and at times unprecedented: on a single day in January of this year, 70,000 people (45,000 of them American and 4,000 of them British) lost their jobs!

Of course, it’s not just the corporate world that has been infected by this recession: it has permeated much of our daily lives. However, it is the closure of multinational financial companies that has had the greatest impact on the global economy and provided the media with the most iconic images of the credit crunch so far.

Here, we investigate (and rank) 10 credit crunched companies that have been forced to lay off thousands of their employees.

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For levels of sheer excitement and entertainment, there’s not much that comes close to a good office raid. And when we say office raid, we mean armoured police kicking down doors, expensive suits scampering down the fire escapes, top secret documents flying around and generally the type of mayhem that Bruce Willis in a white tank top would be proud to put his name to.

The combination of loud noises, angry policemen and big guns (sometimes) upsetting the usually rather stifled atmosphere of the office is one that never ceases to entertain, and adds a certain drama to police investigations which otherwise may not have even made the papers. What’s more, when police raid an office, it usually means somebody rich is about to get arrested. And who doesn’t want to see that?

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It is no coincidence that the vast majority of the world’s most famous buildings are used as offices. Governments and multinational companies that commission and inhabit such buildings are the only organisations with the power and money necessary to create constructions that are large, cutting-edge and ultimately impressive enough to become famous.

The list presented below includes examples of striking office buildings built from the mid 18th century, right up to 2004 and incorporates a range of styles (from neo-classical to high-tech modern) and materials (from sandstone to steel, concrete and glass.) Each building has one or more feature or function that is so unique; it has led to it being known the world over.

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Despite tough economic conditions, large office complexes continue to be built in major cities throughout the world. ‘Green’ campaigners argue that such developments are inherently bad for the environment, and skeptics point out that by making sustainability central to their new office designs, many companies are simply attempting to offset their environmentally degrading activities elsewhere.

However, considering that large-scale offices will continue to be built, and in increasing numbers throughout the developing world, it is great to see that so many of the new ones are being designed with a low environmental impact in mind. This list comprises 10 existing and upcoming office buildings that are not only bold, beautiful and futuristic, but ‘green’ too.

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