Hang Nga Guesthouse, Crazy House, Đà Lạt, Vietnam

Rather than using standard architectural plans as blueprints, Nga produces paintings, and hires non-professional local craftsmen to transform these into structural elements. Few right angles are found throughout the building, which instead boasts a complex organic structure echoing natural forms. The building’s exterior 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. Describing it as a "fairy tale house", observers have variously drawn comparisons between the building's architecture and the works of Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney. In attempting to classify the building’s architecture, the People's Committee of the city of Đà Lạt described it as “expressionist”.
• Interior design
The guesthouse has ten themed guest rooms, each one having an animal as its theme; examples include the tiger room, the eagle room, the ant room and the kangaroo room, each with decorations matching the theme. The walls of the tiger room, for instance, feature a large tiger with glowing red eyes; 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. Many of the rooms incorporate an added level of symbolism, with the animal theme connected to a particular nationality. For instance, Nga describes the tiger room as representing “the strengths of the Chinese”; the eagle room as being “big and strong” like Americans; and the ant room as representing the “hard working Vietnamese”.
Furniture inside the rooms is handcrafted—and sometimes even built into the rooms themselves—to match the rooms’ nonlinear, organic shape. Stone decorations throughout the house depict animals such as bears, giraffes, frogs, spiders, and ants, along with natural elements such as mushrooms and spider webs. Stairways and hallways inside the building are designed to resemble tunnels and caves.