Hằng Nga guesthouse

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. Since 1990 she has been building one house in Đà Lạt, and she builds it without drawings: she paints the design instead, and hands the paintings to local craftsmen with no formal training in construction who translate them into sprayed and hand-modelled concrete. The result has almost no right angles. Popularly called the Crazy House, it reads as a giant hollow tree, with caves, spider webs, mushrooms and rooms named after animals grown out of the trunks. Critics have described the architecture as expressionist; Nga acknowledges Antoni Gaudí, and visitors have reached for Dalí and Disney. The building has never been finished — it is still being extended — and it remains her home, her office and a hotel open to the public.