Jay Branson, a self-taught architect, started building a round barn in rural Oklahoma to process his grief.

Its beauty draws strangers off the highway in Oklahoma, and a gentle kind of obsession mixed with down-home prairie demeanor saw the barn turn into something more like a cathedral.

The story begins decades ago when Branson went to visit a friend in Washington D.C., where he stood under the dome of the US Capitol and wanted dearly forever after to build a round structure with a dome.

Growing up a chiseled farmhand turned handyman, Branson is entirely self-taught in architecture and home-building, and built houses in the tiny decaying town of Marshall, Oklahoma. When his first wife Julie passed away, he needed a project to keep his mind going.

Settling on a round barn to park his motor home, his neighbor suggested he turn it into a wedding venue, which struck him as a good idea.

After completing the large main area using interlocking concrete-filled foam and rebar blocks that fit together like LEGOS, he began to imagine what a dome might look like, and produced a sketch of the interlocking octagons and diamonds that would form the arched ribs of the dome to be built with poplar wood.

It draws the gaze up to an oculus where natural light floods the space and regularly causes visitors to shed a tear.