Japanese firm Domino Architects has renovated an apartment in Tokyo by installing wooden partitions instead of building new walls (+ slideshow).

The J House apartment is located in a developing district of the city and was designed for a young family with a two-year-old child.

To accommodate the growing household in a restricted floor space, Domino Architects created "corners, blind spots and niches" using wooden panelling.

Doors in the panels conceal additional storage space and include cut-out areas for light switches and power points.

The previous dividing walls were knocked down to create an open-plan kitchen, dining and living space, and wooden storage partitions now enclose the bedroom and bathroom.

"To make the volume as simple as possible, we carefully chamfered the edge of the plywood 45 degrees and made the corner as sharp as possible," the firm's principal architect Yusuke Oono told Dezeen.

"The wall material is exposed plywood which is one of the cheapest materials in Japan," he added. "But at the same time, we wanted to use this ordinary material in a very fine way and present it to give a different impression."

Interior designer Maayan Zusman used a similar wooden partition system to create hidden storage space for a Tel Aviv apartment, while PKMN Architectures kept things mobile in a Spanish home with modular storage walls that spun around to create extra bedrooms.

Domino Architects chose contrasting textures and materials to lend a "rich, tactile sensation" to rooms, including Lauan wood and plastic.

Rough concrete has been used to surround the kitchen, which includes white tiling and plywood surfaces that echo the panelling. Rooms are lit by low-hanging pendants, and a set of wooden shelves covers one wall in the living area.

Shelves and doors are covered in coloured plastic, with different shades chosen to mark out individual areas. Painted concrete walls are coloured darker for sleeping areas, and brighter for living spaces. Furniture was also selected to match the colour scheme of the apartment.

Architecture studio Narch also opted for an open-plan approach in its renovation of a Barcelona apartment, which used patterned tiles and sliding glass doors to separate areas.

Photography is by Gottingham.