Recently, many examples of gold nanoclusters have been synthesized due to their exceptional spectroscopic properties and potential applications in nanotechnology. In this work we put forward an approach based on the icosahedral [Au-13](5+) unit and summarize three possible extensions of the unit: wrapping, bonding, and vertex sharing. We show that the electronic structure of such clusters can be treated in a more localized manner and show how the approach could be applied to understand the structure and bonding of a large variety of gold nanoclusters.