According to architect Donald Chong, when his clients wanted to build a house in The Beaches, a popular Toronto neighborhood, “they were committed to the idea that they could live well in a compact square footage.”

This was to their advantage, says Chong, a founding partner of Toronto’s Williamson Chong Architects. Narrow infill projects can scare off buyers. The couple found a 19-foot-wide lot with one catch: a 100-year-old Norway spruce in the backyard. Saving the tree and compressing the footprint for the three-story, 2,300-square-foot house “was our first big chess move,” says Chong. He bumped the living room up to the second floor with the children’s bedrooms and created a “kitchen studio” on the first. It spans the length of the house, with window walls at each end.