When Danielle Williams and her partner Hassan Hall moved to Missouri in 2012, they needed shelter before winter hit, and they had almost no money.

So Hassan set to work designing a circular earthen home using whatever their community had on hand: pallet wood, recycled bottles, local clay, and cedar for cordwood construction.

Six months later, the Hermitage was done: a 213-square-foot round home with a living roof and a reciprocal roof structure. It was kept simple, since they could rely on the community kitchen at their Dancing Rabbit village next door.

Fourteen years later, the couple has upgraded to a home that runs almost entirely on its own. The Tea Cozy is roughly 800 square feet, built from straw bale, cordwood, and cob, with a metal roof for rainwater catchment. A sunroom passively heats the house. An Amish wood cookstove provides radiant floor heat. A filtered rainwater cistern supplies drinkable tap water straight from the tap.

The cordwood walls are embedded with cut glass bottles, so colored light filters through the whole house. This one took Hassan two to three years to build, but cost only $30,000 to $35,000 in materials, all in.

Hassan loves building in the round because there’s minimal structural guesswork; no worrying about where load-bearing walls need to go the way you would with a rectangular space. Danielle loves living in the round because she feels embraced by nature, like the house itself is giving her a hug.