What if we could retrofit… everything? A discarded pizza box for example. If you squint your eyes, it looks a bit like a laptop, right? It flips open: the bottom portion is the keyboard, and the lid is kind of like a screen. Could tech transform this grease-stained trash into a functioning computer?

I mean, if we’re serious about zero carbon, we should be retrofitting a whole lot more than our heritage buildings. Bear with me. If a grain store in Kings Cross can be transformed into an art school, why can’t a pizza box be reborn as a laptop?

Invoked Computing, or IC - my favourite technology yet to be adopted – says yes. Indeed, IC suggests the entire world can be retooled using vast, computing power. IC – developed by Alvaro Cassinelli and Alexis Zerroug at the University of Tokyo in 2011 - is a concept where everyday objects are transformed into communication devices through multimodal augmented reality, allowing users to interact with them as if they were specialized devices. Local, ambient computing recognises your action or gesture and uses parametric speaker arrays to transform the artefact you’re holding.

IC makes technology more intuitive by having it adapt to user actions rather than requiring users to learn specific interfaces. Open the pizza box like a laptop and start typing and video and sound are projected onto the cardboard. Or swipe a banana to your ear, your caller’s voice will seem to emerge from the piece of fruit.

But IC also aims to re-use all the things that already exist in the world rather than making new stuff. It could well usher in a new era of decoration and visual excess, drawing us away from brands and sameness – why have an iPhone when your personal comms device could be hand-held silver-stemmed mirror in a Louis XV style, flowers and bunches of grapes set off the surface?

The practice of retrofit, you might argue, is architectural and urban design’s destiny. A way of doing that But we need to properly sell this idea. Retrofit isn’t virtue signalling. It’s not box-ticking for net-zero. No. Retrofit, adaptation, and working with the existing built environment is now the most creatively rich and intellectually demanding territory in architecture.

The future is cheap. The future is low and high tech. The future is a pizza box retrofit.