Hacktion stations: Paris group plays its part

The designers have created coat racks for public walls, dynamo-powered phone chargers in phone boxes, and a coin slide that lets people retrieve their change from vending machines more easily.

‘The city is often a place where everything is the same,’ says Raphael Pluvinage co-founder of the project. ‘We thought we could make public spaces more specific to people’s needs. We worked on ways in which we could augment the city to see what problems we could solve.’

The project uses 3D printing to make custom-built parts more quickly than traditional methods of production. The designs for the augmented parts are available for free download, so that anyone can rebuild, improve or use them in a new location.

For more about ways in which people are augmenting established designs, read our Hacktivism micro trend.