A key-value store is adapted to represent hierarchical structures, such as directory structures, to be associated with objects otherwise mapped to a flat keyspace. For example, one or more key-value pairs stored in the key-value store are designated to have a key indicating the name of a hierarchical structure, and an associated value that maps the structure to a namespace (e.g., of a group of objects to be associated with a directory). Inbound requests for operations related to the objects in a given namespace and defining the structure are checked against such “redirecting” key-value pairs to determine whether the structure is related to the namespace objects, and if so, the request is internally processed to perform the requested operations against the actual key-value pair(s) associated with the objects without necessitating identification of the objects with a fully qualified name as represented in the flat keyspace.