We explore a direct method allowing to solve numerically inverse type problems for hyperbolic type equations. We first consider the reconstruction of the full solution of the equation posed in $\Omega \times (0, T )$ - $\Omega$ a bounded subset of $\mathbb{R}^N$ - from a partial distributed observation. We employ a least-squares technic and minimize the $L^2$-norm of the distance from the observation to any solution. Taking the hyperbolic equation as the main constraint of the problem, the optimality conditions are reduced to a mixed formulation involving both the state to reconstruct and a Lagrange multiplier. Under usual geometric optic conditions, we show the well-posedness of this mixed formulation (in particular the inf-sup condition) and then introduce a numerical approximation based on space-time finite elements discretization. We show the strong convergence of the approximation and then discussed several examples for $N = 1$ and $N = 2$. The reconstruction of both the state and the source term is also discussed, as well as the boundary case. The parabolic case - more delicate as it requires the use of appropriate weights - will be also addressed. Joint works with Nicolae Cîndea and Diego Araujo de Souza.[-]