MOUNTAIN VIEW — In a project that could rival Frank Gehry’s forest-roofed Facebook office rising in Menlo Park and Apple’s upcoming spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino, Google wants to erect a giant, adjustable canopy of metal and glass east of Highway 101 in Mountain View.

The search behemoth will reveal a bizarre and playful design Friday to expand its corporate campus with as many as four new buildings, parts of which will be able to mechanically morph to fit the company’s needs, according to several Mountain View officials shown drawings of the plan.

“The best way to describe it is as a tent-like structure, with a tremendous amount of glass,” said City Councilman Ken Rosenberg. “The most impressive design feature is how it brings in the outside world.”

Friday is the deadline for developers to submit major projects for the city’s North Bayshore technology district if they want to build on some of the 3.4 million square feet the city zoned for new office space. LinkedIn is among the other tech companies expected to unveil big plans, according to several city officials.

But with the company’s $64 billion in cash and short-term investments, Google’s project by two European architecture firms will be the most ambitious, featuring a crane structure that allows the company to “move walls and offices, make it smaller, make it bigger, whatever they need,” and environment-minded designs to make workers feel they are outside, Rosenberg said.

“There’s a lot of open-airness to it,” said Mayor John McAlister.

Google has declined to talk about its plans before delivering them to the city. The drawings shown to city officials are so conceptual it’s still unknown how large the buildings will be or how many workers they will accommodate. The cost of the project also has not been revealed.

Architecture firms Heatherwick Studio, based in the United Kingdom, and Bjarke Ingels Group, based in Denmark, have been working with Google on the project, according to Bjarke Ingels spokeswoman Daria Pahhota. Both are known for avant-garde visions, including Heatherwick’s movable pedestrian bridge in London that curls up and down.

“It was a very advanced and memorable design, with glass domes over offices and outdoor features,” said Lenny Siegel, another member of the Mountain View City Council invited by Google to examine the plans. “They would be relying on bicycle and pedestrian movement between buildings.”

The New York Times first reported the proposal Wednesday.

Google already owns 83 separate properties in Mountain View and employs roughly 15,000 people in the small city, raising complaints about traffic congestion. But with the exception of its campus anchor, the so-called Googleplex on Amphitheatre Parkway, most of the buildings are nondescript low-rise offices with big parking lots scattered across the North Bayshore district that lies between 101 and the wetlands of San Francisco Bay. The same district is also home to Intuit, LinkedIn and Microsoft’s large Silicon Valley branch. The Google plan will replace some buildings on the Google campus but not the building now considered to be the headquarters.

Rosenberg and Siegel are part of a new political slate that took over City Hall this year after campaigning to bring housing to North Bayshore, an idea that Google supports but the previous council and many longtime residents and other companies opposed. The Bayshore zoning plan passed by the outgoing council last year bans housing in the area, but the new council members are trying to reverse course.

“There’s a new political reality in the city,” said Siegel, with more awareness that the tech-fueled traffic congestion and skyrocketing real estate prices could be abated if more opportunities existed for Google workers to live near the campus.

Even McAlister, the mayor and one of the most prominent housing opponents, showed some flexibility earlier this month when he endorsed a plan to reconsider the housing limits.

Siegel said that how much Google and other tech companies are able to expand “will depend on how much housing we’re able to put there. It’s difficult for people to commute there, despite all the shuttle buses.”

The company now operates a fleet of more than 100 coach buses that carry workers from as far as San Rafael and Santa Cruz. Once they arrive, many of the workers travel across the scattered campus on the multicolored bicycles the company supplies. In January, Google also launched a free community bus that loops around the city.

The company also has big plans to develop a new office in Redwood City. But some of its other announced plans have hit snags, including a stalled project to develop a grand new office on the federally owned Moffett Field just south of the Googleplex, and a London development delayed by design changes.

By April, city officials expect to host what Councilman Mike Kasperzak calls a “beauty contest” to inspect the various designs and urge tech companies and other developers to show how the community will benefit from their new offices.

“Nobody will be issued a building permit until the current level of traffic is reduced,” Kasperzak said. “There are very strict requirements about traffic … before they can actually bring more people in there.”

Among the other plans expected to be submitted Friday are for a multistory LinkedIn development overlooking 101 that could also end up razing, and replacing, the Century Cinema on North Shoreline Boulevard. Developers are rushing to meet the deadline to ensure they are able to build.

“It’s kind of a first-come, first-served basis. The 3.4 million square feet could be developed pretty quickly,” said Councilman Chris Clark.

City officials said the Google project could span two blocks just south of the Googleplex along Huff Avenue between Charleston Road and Plymouth Street.

“The majority of people will be pleased, or happy, to see the innovative design and the creative thinking that’s going into this plan,” Rosenberg said. “The naysayers will always be naysayers, but in order to be a world-class city you need world-class buildings and architecture. This fits the bill.”

Contact Matt O’Brien at 408-920-5011. Follow him at Twitter.com/Mattoyeah.