American company Heliogen has managed to concentrate solar energy to temperatures of more than 1000 degrees Celsius – hot enough to provide a fossil-fuel-free way to make concrete. More
London-based studio Nir Meiri has teamed up with Indian designer Vaidehi Thakkar to create a series of lamps with shades made from red cabbage leaves. More
A German construction project has saved an estimated 136 tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by incorporating air pockets made of recycled plastic within its concrete slabs. More
Dezeen promotion: Silicon Valley design-build firm Katerra has launched a brand called KOVA that offers "simple, timeless" building products and materials. More
An easily biodegradable material that could be "part of a global answer" to single-use plastic pollution has won its inventor, British designer Lucy Hughes, the international James Dyson Award. More
Canadian camouflage company Hyperstealth Biotechnology has patented the technology behind a material that bends light to make people and objects near invisible to the naked eye. More
Rain would repair rather than damage roads if they were made of the tyre-based pavement invented by Israel Antonio Briseño Carmona, a Mexican student and winner of the nation's James Dyson Award. More
An exhibition exploring how makers are recycling and repurposing materials has opened at Make, a gallery dedicated to craft run by Hauser & Wirth in the Somerset town of Bruton. More
Good design is about interrogating systems not just creating beautiful chairs, biofabrication designer Natsai Audrey Chieza argued at Dezeen Day. More
Swedish company Re:newcell is aiming to disrupt the fashion industry and save natural resources by creating garments from Circulose – a new material made from recycled cotton clothes. More
The Growing Pavilion is a temporary events space at Dutch Design Week constructed with panels grown from mushroom mycelium supported on a timber frame. More
Montreal-based fashion designer Ying Gao has created a pair of robotic dresses that respond to their environment by rippling, expanding and contracting as if they are alive. More
Canadian brand Native Shoes has developed a sneaker that is entirely made from one continuous piece of algae-enriched EVA in a bid to clean up the footwear industry. More
Biotech start-up Spiber and The North Face's Japanese distributor Goldwin have created the first mass-manufactured jacket made from synthetic spider silk. More
ÉCAL graduate Luisa Kahlfeldt has designed a new diaper that is more sustainable than even other reusable cloth nappies — an innovation for which she won the Swiss James Dyson Award. More
Thai company BeeConscious has created wraps from beeswax-coated cotton, that can stand in for cling film and other plastic packaging for food. More
Italian design studio High Society is putting waste from the local beer and coffee industry to good use, by turning it into a range of tubular lights and using profits to fund dependency prevention. More
Dutch design collective Envisions has developed a paving strategy for the city of Eindhoven that involves cutting, washing and stamping stones. More
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have demonstrated an experimental way of manufacturing cement that releases no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More
Consumers could change the colour of their cars, shoes, clothes or other belongings at will, using a new light-responsive ink from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More
