Mention the term “artist’s loft” and it conjures images of stainless Viking stoves and sleek, uncomfortable furniture. Now scale that version back. Strip away the catalog slickness and imagine a remodeled garage, filled with vintage furniture and appliances, industrial objects doubling as art, two dogs, and a cat. The space has all the funky, handcrafted appeal of a movie set. Imagine a ‘60s bohemian romance, set in SoHo.

This is home to Tim Fouch, 34, an architecture student in Eugene, Oregon. Fouch created this warm living space out of equal measures financial necessity, creative ingenuity, and an interest in sustainable design. Not including his $525-per-month rent, he’s spent a mere $40—two twenties—to create a home with a functioning bathroom and kitchen. Most of the money went toward materials for a shower constructed out of cinder blocks (a tarp and rubber tubing drains water from the shower and flushes the toilet—an original design).

Although it’s a model of economy, Fouche’s studio doesn't feel cheap. Original artwork adorns the walls. Large leafy plants are everywhere. The decor would make a commercial stylist wild with envy. Fouch, who’s clearly a master of invention, laughs when it’s suggested that he could teach a seminar on making creative reuse cool. “I feel like a complete idiot,” he says as we snap his photograph.

As an engineering undergrad at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Fouch thought his chosen career would allow him room for experimentation. But the engineering jobs he took left little room for creative problem solving. So he took a welding class and began gigging as a machinist for an animation studio, creating models that appeared in stop-motion films and commercials. The work was more engaging but still left Fouch wanting. “I enjoyed it, but it’s really, really minute and precise,” he says.

His eyes wander, landing on a 16-foot steel relief he calls Ode to Louise Nevelson, an abstract expressionist sculptor he admires. It’s the product of his cutting loose one day from the small-scale projects of his job. “It’s nice to change your perspective and work big,” he says.

That day, when he realized that he enjoyed this larger scale, Fouch decided to apply architecture school. He suddenly found himself facing a move from Portland to Eugene with very little money, so he made the relocation as practical as possible, hunting for a space that would do double duty. “Instead of trying to find a place to live where I could work,” he explains, “I decided to find a place to work where I could live.”

He found a garage raw enough to convert into a studio. After a month spent building out the space, Fouch has finally settled in, working on his own art and design projects when he’s not drafting structural diagrams for class. Some projects, like a hatband made of broken saw blades, are the kind of thing he knocks out over breakfast. Others, like a spiral staircase in pieces in the corner, are more complex commissions from occasional clients referred by friends.

The mascot of Fouch’s inclination to think big is his 123-pound Great Dane, Jasper. Photos of the hulking dog line the walls. Bee, a pit bull/shar-pei mix, is Jasper’s desperately fawning underling. And Zaboobles, the lone feline, gets nosed aside when Jasper feels she’s getting too much attention. When the six-year-old Dane began to have trouble maneuvering up and down the steep, narrow stairs left by the previous tenant, Fouch came up with a solution that would relieve the stress on his massive joints—an L-shaped staircase built from wooden pallets found dumped in an abandoned factory nearby.

In an attempt to offset the mayhem of three pets and soften the industrial edge of the workspace, Fouch arranged a Zen garden, complete with Buddha statue and lush potted plants, in the main living area. An octagonal worktable, 10 feet in diameter and also made of pallets, dominates the rest of the ground floor. It serves as work surface, dining table, and bar. Zaboobles tiptoes over 50 rusted railroad spikes, neatly arranged, that Fouch discovered in an empty lot. He has no idea what to do with them, but his face lights up when considering the possibilities. A miniature railroad for Jasper? Party favors? Jewelry?

The sums of money people plunk down to achieve the open, artistic feeling that Fouch has created here tends to lock them into a living situation for years. But with Fouch’s meager investment and enormous resourcefulness, this space is only a temporary atelier. It’s striking how easily he straddles the line between inspired homemaker and temporary boarder—the way most of today’s twenty-and thirtysomethings want to live— without sacrificing comfort. For those of us cursing ourselves either for tossing money away as renters or for being bound to property as homeowners, Fouch’s found-and-made solutions are eye-opening.

That’s especially true considering that all of this will be a memory upon graduation. Once school is over and he finds a place to practice architecture, Fouch plans to return the pallets to the places he found them for someone else to reuse. He’ll donate most of his newfound belongings to other students, load his art and his animals into his truck, and move on—no doubt landing some new space that, with Fouch’s imagination, will become a castle where the canines can stretch their legs.