Hasta La Ideas

When it comes to shared spaces, amenities such as public charging stations aren’t necessarily a priority when there’s tax money to be spent. So, like any designer looking to contribute to the greater good, Paris-based industrial designers Sylvain Chasseriaux, Léa Bardin and Raphaël Pluvinage chose to solve the problem an innovative way. Their solution: Taking on these moments of inconvenience with a guerrilla campaign of boldly painted, machine-made items aimed at providing life-hacks that are quite literally hidden in plain sight.

Their series, Fabrique-Hacktion, ranges from tiny tabletops for folding chairs, hand-crank phone chargers, discarded newspaper stations and a tool for easier change-grabbing from vending machines, among other tools.

Aside from providing an unexpected convenience for passersby, Chasseriaux hopes to create “an involvement of people in their public and collective space through installing ‘grafts’—complementary objects—which support a usage and practice while improving or questioning current urban systems and furnitures.” Check out the video below to get a glimpse into the entire series of gadgets:

Each one of the items comes with instructions for making your own. (You can check out the how-tos on the project’s website.) The team also put together a map, tracking where the objects are placed.

A couple of the apparatuses caught my eye in particular. Check out the making/function of these fantastic four:

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