Tell the students – Crazy House Dalat Vietnam’s house structure by Asst. Prof. Dr. Paichit Phawan
One of the most popular tourist attractions in Dalat, Vietnam, Crazy House or Crazy House Hotel, a mysterious house built by a Vietnamese woman named Hang Nga, the daughter of the third former president of Vietnam.
Crazy House was inspired by the fairy tale Alice in Wonderland. It’s a tree house that isn’t built entirely from wood, but some parts are made from concrete and other materials for strength and ease of structural modification. Inside, each section can be walked through. If you don’t walk properly, you’ll end up back where you started, even though the space is so narrow. Inside, there are various rooms. Some are decorated with antique materials. Some rooms have an atmosphere like Tarzan’s house in Disneyland. Some are decorated with multi-colored glass.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Phaichit Phawan, a structural engineer expert from the Faculty of Engineering at Sripatum University, told the students that the distinctive feature of this building is its free-form design. If we examine it in more detail, we will see that this building has been structurally well-designed, starting from the foundation, which defines the boundary structure of the building and determines the main pillars of the base to support the weight of the building. From the sketch of the building structure on display, it can be seen that this building does not have piles, but uses piers with a base on a hard soil layer, which is similar to the soil layers in the provinces of Thailand, which are hard soil layers that are able to support the weight of the pillars and the building.
In addition, the upper structure of the building will be designed in the form of a cable frame, which is a gable to support the weight. It will strengthen the wall structure so that it can support the weight of the entire roof structure very well. Another special thing about the design of this building structure is that it combines structures of various forms together, with a part that is a tall building structure connected to other curved structures that are extended upwards. Every part uses the principle of a cable frame structure, a portal frame, to combine and extend until the shape of the building looks strange from the outside, like it has no shape, but if you look from the perspective of a structural engineer, it will be a systematic work style. And all of this is the importance of the profession called structural engineer, one of the dream jobs for those who love designing building structures.
