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If you have a hankering for the surreal, then this is the place to be.
Resembling scenes from the Hollywood movie “The Cat in the Hat,” the
Hang Nga Guesthouse and Gallery in the province of Dalat, Vietnam has
come to be more popularly known as the “Crazy House.”
Just standing at the entrance alone can make anyone see why the house is
called such. Exceedingly unconventional compared to the usual designs of
houses, the Crazy House features unexpected twists and turns, roofs and
rooms.
Designed to look like a fairy tale castle, the House has enormous
"animals" like a giraffe and a spider adorning the walls and foyers. The
windows are designed in all shapes except for rectangle and circular. It
is a very vivid and tangible monument to the architect’s, Hang Nga,
personal architectural philosophy of dreams, fantasy, folklore and
free-form.
With a tree for the
 building’s
base, huge tree trunks and branches give visitors that “tree-house”
illusion instead of it being a “house-tree.” Very much out of place in
the usual minimalist Vietnam, the Crazy house is something tourists may
usually expect to see in the more fanciful and experimental
architectural structures in Europe. Inside those trunks are rooms -
small suites like a hotel (they can be booked) - and each one different,
designed on a theme for an animal, plant or insect.
The design of the interior is startling, eccentric and original. Low
furniture, much of it built-in, is sculpted to the curving walls;
timber-like mallee root is cut from trees and polished without further
treatment, so an organic, “unfinished” effect is done for every room.
Beds are simply mattresses made to fit the various shapes that form a
sleeping corner.
The best part of all of these is a centrally carved
animal statue in each room, denoting that room's theme. Depending on the
guest’s tastes, they can choose to sleep with an ant or a kangaroo.
Doors are shaped to suit the wall openings, and they often turn out like
a Steiner door, with the weight of the panel flowing in with the shape
of a body, just as light fittings and curtain tracks take their position
in the twisting spaces as if they grew there.
It is hard to imagine what kind of personality or vision the designer of
the house has that influenced the very unique, to say the least, design
of this Guest house.
Actually, the architect of this little wonder in Dalat is a woman named
Hang Nga (hence the name of the guesthouse). One earlier of her design
buildings was torn down because it was considered to be anti-socialist.
There must still be party people who do not approve of the lavish style
of this house.
There is one very significant thing that protects the Hang Nga Guest
house’s architect from too much criticism though. Her father was
formerly president of Vietnam in the 1980s.
Visit beautiful Vietnam today! |
