Hang Nga guesthouse is popularly known as the “Crazy House” is an unconventional building designed and constructed by Vietnamese architect Dang Viet Nga in Da Lat, Lam Dong province, Vietnam.
With a campus of nearly 2,000 m2 and located at the center on Huynh Thuc Khang Street, Crazy House has extremely attracted many visitors coming here for its unique architecture and its singularity. Opening in 1990, the building has been described as a “fairy tale house” , the building’s overall design resembles a giant tree, incorporating sculptured design elements representing natural forms such as animals, mushrooms, spider webs, and caves. Hang Nga is the person who creates this unique idea, stated that her overall design was inspired by the natural environment surrounding the city of Da Lat, along with the work of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. When she built this house, she desires to bring people back to nature to be more friendly with it, close to it and love it. Rather than relying on the classical principles of shape layout composing of straight lines and perpendicular planes as before, she has produced paintings and hired non-professional local artisans to transform these into structural elements.
When you look from outside, the building resembles a five-story-high banyan tree with unevenly shaped window openings and branch-like structures that “grow” along its walls and rise above the roof into the sky. It looks really amazing.
The peculiar and unique architecture of the “Crazy House”
Then if you go into the house, the more you go inside the more interested you will feel. The guesthouse has ten themed guest rooms, each one having an animal includes the tiger room, the eagle room, the ant room, and the kangaroo room with each decoration of separate theme. In the tiger room, you will see a large tiger with glowing red eyes that show the power; the kangaroo room incorporates a sculpted kangaroo with a fireplace in its belly; the fireplace in the eagle room is in the form of a giant eagle’s egg. That’s really unique and strange, right?
Especially, the furniture inside the rooms is handcrafted—and sometimes even built into the rooms themselves—to match the rooms’ nonlinear, organic shape. Some rooms offer full facilities as the requirement of a luxury hotel. Most people stay here said that the most beautiful room is the “gourd” room because it is the highest room of the villa and in this room, you can burn wood in the belly of the gourd, keep warm all night to sleep without blankets. Spending their time to sleep here, tourists can comfortably burn wood inside the gourd, keeping warm throughout the night without any blanket. Actually, they will enjoy the feeling of losing in the fairytale when overnighting here.
The “gourd” room
Besides, stairways and hallways inside the building are designed to resemble tunnels and caves. You should try to walk there once.
It’s might be a little scare to stay in these crazy rooms, however, to test your courage, you should try to rent a night. Some people said that you feel like they lost in fairy tales, some of them quite a little creepy because of some huge animal in the rooms. Room ranged from VND 290,000 to 630,000 per room per night for Vietnamese, and from $29–63 for foreigners. Or if you don’t want to sleep here you can make a tour to visit the building during the day with a small fee.
Thanks to its magnificent and bizarre beauty were built in the unconventional architecture without under any architectural motif, Crazy House deserves to be an attractive rendezvous for tourists who would like to explore the peculiar and unique architecture.
If you have a chance to be here don’t forget to visit other places in this misty city.
Don’t hesitate to pack your luggage, come, and discover the amazing land. For more information please visit our family website:
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