Manolo for the Home

I’ve written about weird houses and unusual structures before, but this is one of the weirdest!

Hang Nga Guesthouse and Gallery in Dalat, Vietnam is better known as The Crazy House and it’s not hard to see why. The base of the guesthouse was built to resemble a giant tree, but more of a scary horror movie tree than a friendly fairyland tree. The whole structure is riddled with unexpected twists and turns, rooms where one least expects them, organically shaped windows, and… er… animals. Stone animals, that is, like bears, giraffes, and spiders.

Built in 1990 by a woman named Dang Viet Nga (the daughter of a former president of Vietnam), The Crazy House immediately began attracting attention. She saw an opportunity, and opened the house to the public, who’d happily pay a small fee to gawk at the house’s statues and pools and oddly-shaped rooms.

Her creative ideas have distinguished the house from all others in Dalat. She notes that the natural surrounding inspired the design. “Living in the Da Lat, the surrounding wilderness inspired me to focus on nature,” she said, adding that in the past, people lived closer to nature, and as a result, closer and more harmoniously with each other.

My verdict? I’d love to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live in it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 5:45 am by Never teh Bride and is filed under Unusual homes, Unusual structures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.