Calm Yourself in a Former Hippie Commune’s Tiny Hut

Many people seeking a spiritual experience head to the Lama Foundation, on the site of a former hippie commune in New Mexico founded in the late 1960s that has transitioned into a yoga and spiritual retreat center. Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher who authored the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now used to hold seminars there. It’s an important, nearly untouched piece of land where visitors and pilgrims from all over the world stay to take classes, camp and connect with the sweeping views of valleys and mountaintops.





Recently the community elders decided to build a hermit hut, a place of solitude where one or two guests could stay for a week or two during a meditation program. So they tapped husband and wife architects Stephen Eckert and Jade Polizzi to help design and build one.

In turn Eckert and Polizzi, both environmental design professors at the University of Colorado–Boulder, partnered with 16 of their students to design and build the structure as part of a class project.

The 100-square-foot hut sits on a mountain ridge in the small town of Questa, about a half hour north of Taos. The Lama Foundation’s main campus — and bathroom — is about 500 yards away through the pine trees.

The walls and built-in bed are all beetle-kill wood from Colorado with a natural stain. The team added green pigment to the stain to create the colored band. Knobs and hooks from Anthropologie line the colored board so guests can hang clothes, towels and other items.


The hut gets plenty of natural light, but four simple Edison bulbs illuminate the space at night. Eckert and his team made the bentwood trusses in his university woodshop. They laser-cut plywood panels to add geometric patterns to the interior.

The wooden box on the wall is a fold-up desk.


A drop-down ledge creates a writing or reading service that’s accessible by sitting on the edge of the bed.


More hooks line the entryway corner, where a small marine plywood bench creates a mudroom of sorts where guests can take off their shoes.

The team used tile scraps to create the floor pattern based on a mandala from Dass’ Be Here Now book. (A mandala is a geometric symbol used in Hinduism and Buddhism.)

The team found the mahogany doors at an architectural salvage yard and refinished them.



They laser cut a mandala on wallboards that the students then pieced together like a puzzle onsite.





A fire swept through the community around 15 or 20 years ago, destroying most of the structures, which were straw bale and straw clay. So they chose HardiePlank siding because of its flame-retardant characteristics.

The post came from a fallen juniper tree nearby. “It’s completely rot resistant and will last many years,” says Eckert, shown here with wife Jade Polizzi. The small deck and steps are ipe wood, and the log benches were crafted from downed trees also found on the property.

Eckert says they spent about $11,000 on materials and it took about six weeks to build the hut.


More: See more creative small getaways

Check out a time-lapse video of the project:

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