Đặng Việt Nga took a doctorate in architecture in Moscow and is the daughter of Trường Chinh, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. She has spent more than thirty years building a single house in Đà Lạt, and she builds it without drawings: instead of plans she makes paintings, and hands them to local craftsmen who have no formal training in construction to be turned into structure. The result, the Hằng Nga guesthouse, has almost no right angles — a five-storey concrete banyan tree with caves, webs and animal rooms grown out of it, which critics have called expressionist and which she says descends from the pine forests around Đà Lạt and from Antoni Gaudí. It remains her home, her office and, since 1990, a hotel open to the public.
