As city property prices continue to skyrocket, the trend for micro apartments is growing. We've rounded up eight examples – from a 13-square-metre crashpad in Poland, to a Parisian flat with a home cinema – to show how to make the most of a tiny space (+ slideshow). More
Oriol Garcia has overhauled a derelict apartment in Barcelona, removing walls he deemed "light barriers" to create a bright and spacious home that celebrates its historic details (+ slideshow). More
Aurora Arquitectos knocked through walls to create a large living room in this old Lisbon apartment, and inserted a wall with curving edges to form a pair of bedrooms (+ slideshow). More
Architect Silvia Allori has overhauled a 1970s flat in Florence to create her own home and workspace, which features furniture that folds down from the walls and a shiny gold curtain that hides mess (+ slideshow). More
British studio Nimtim has updated a London flat with pastel blue cabinetry, zigzagging parquet and marble to create an urban retreat for a children's heart surgeon (+ slideshow). More
Spanish architect Raúl Sánchez has overhauled a long and narrow apartment in Barcelona to create a sequence of rooms lined in patterned tiles, micro-cement, marble and wood (+ slideshow). More
Dribbles of gold fill the cracks in the floor of this Kyoto apartment, designed by architecture studio TANK to replicate the traditional Japanese pottery technique of kintsugi. More
A trio of local design firms teamed up to create an affordable apartment building that occupies a full city block in San Francisco's urban core (+ slideshow). More
Taiwanese studio A Little Design has renovated a 22-metre-square micro apartment to serve every need of its occupant (+ slideshow). More
Bespoke joinery creates furniture, partitions and storage solutions for this Sydney studio apartment renovated by local design firm Catseye Bay (+ slideshow). More
"Intuitive" apartments with moving surfaces and foldaway furniture will feature in the first residential development from the team behind Yo! Sushi and Yotel, which is currently awaiting planning permission. More
When designing the interior for a newly built apartment in Copenhagen, Studio David Thulstrup used over 300 antiques and bespoke elements to "avoid the usual collection of Scandinavian classics" (+ slideshow). More
Alessandro Mendini has become the latest designer to restyle an apartment in Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse housing block in Marseille, adding colourful totems and Postmodern furnishings (+ slideshow). More
Spanish studio PYO Arquitectos has removed some of the internal walls in a Madrid flat to make it less segregated and bring in more light (+ slideshow). More
Architecture studio Edwards Moore has converted a small Melbourne apartment into a Airbnb-style rental property, where guests are invited to buy the furniture, art and accessories when they leave. More
Perforated steel panels create private enclosures around the balconies that front this compact housing development in Tokyo by local architect Hiroyuki Moriyama (+ slideshow). More
Japanese architect Masatoshi Hirai has refurbished an apartment in Tokyo, creating one shared bedroom, living space and wardrobe for its inhabitants (+ slideshow). More
Japanese firm Domino Architects has renovated an apartment in Tokyo by installing wooden partitions instead of building new walls (+ slideshow). More
Barrel-vaulted ceilings and exposed brick walls evoke the heritage of this apartment in Barcelona, which local firm Nook Architects remodelled to make better use of the awkward existing plan (+ slideshow). More
Architecture studio Narch has renovated a Barcelona apartment, removing many of the internal walls to create a single space with a variety of patterned tile floors (+ slideshow). More