LOUISVILLE, Colo. — For many Americans who bought more home than they could really afford in the giddy days before the crash, the big-house dream has become a nightmare in the ashes of foreclosure and regret.

So after all that, how does 84 square feet sound?

Glenn Grassi, in building his prototype one-room microhome — 7 by 12 feet stem-to-stern, including a wood-burning stove, an antique parlor chair that also serves as a seat for the compost toilet beneath it, and a shower under the bed — is hoping it sounds, well, like shelter in the old-fashioned practical sense.

Or like a work of art. He is not exactly sure.

As a theater set designer, Mr. Grassi, 41, said he built the structure partly with the goal of working through his ideas about the environment and sustainable construction. But he also wanted to use the tricks he had learned about perspective, light and depth perception, honed through years of creating spatial illusion on stages and film sets here in Colorado, where he now lives, and in Los Angeles.