A rare view of Nokia's home turf (pictures)

Nokia's headquarters in Espoo, Finland, is known as Nokia House, or NoHo, and is the centerpiece of an industrial park on the bay. It's about a 10-minute drive from the center of neighboring Helsinki.

Walk in the main entrance, and you're greeted to a unique waiting area with an expansive view of the bay and the Helsinki skyline.

NoHo has three connected buildings which share the same atrium open-air design. The building is an impressive mixture of glass, steel, and wood.

Nokia House sits on the Keilaniemi Bay and spans three structures.

The large skylights mean a lot of natural light filters into the building. Unfortunately, Finland at this time of year sees the sun come up late in the morning and set excessively early in the afternoon, making for a dark building.

Nokia didn't let me into the main working areas of the office, so I had to settle with a bit of stealth photography to get my peek.

This hallway and the one above connect all three buildings, so no one has to brave the elements to get from one place to another.

The Finnish have been known to be reserved in their show of enthusiasm. Naturally, Nokia hedges its mission statement a little bit in the entrance of its lounge/product showcase.

The Nokia lounge features a bulk of the notable cell phones in its history. Notably, the lipstick cell phone, the N-Gage cellular and handheld gaming device, and a few bulky old suitcase cell phones were on display.

By the lounge is this kiosk and display, which looks like something out of the movie "Tron."

The Nokia blue shines through from its logo at night. This picture was taken at 8 a.m. local time.

Tampere, in northern Finland, houses its R&D facilities and works on projects such as the PureView cameras. On display here is a reminder of where it came from, a giant classic candy bar phone.

Because of the sensitive nature of the work here, I could only get limited photos of the facility. Shown here is a Lumia PureView 808 mounted and ready for a drop test. That office also tested its ability to handle rain drops and excessive cold. Corrected at 7:03 a.m. PT: to change the name of the phone that was tested. It was originally and incorrectly labeled as a Lumia 820.

The Tampere offices in particular were fairly quiet. Shown here is the central cafeteria at the base of one of the buildings. It was already 3 p.m., however, so it's not surprising that no one was down eating.