When Trekkies Become Clients

More precisely, the 600 million yuan ($97 million) building "was inspired by the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, which appeared in three Star Trek movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s," according to WSJ. The building, its architect not known at this time, opened in May 2014.

NetDragon founder Liu Dejian, a graduate of the University of Kansas, is a huge fan of the show, so he decided to model the company's headquarters on the Enterprise, even going so far as to gain legal permission from the U.S. rights holder. Star Trek has not been very popular in China, though perhaps this building will change things.

Although this appears to be the first instance of a building based on a Star Trek vehicle, the Star Wars franchise was given the treatment a few months earlier with the Sandcrawler building designed by Aedas. The building, which serves as the Singapore headquarters of Lucasfilm and is a fairly loose interpretation of the Jawa vehicle, if at all, opened in January 2014.