ABSTRACT
This essay introduces a conceptual and material framework for a sacred materiality using the concept of continual electron flow as a strategy for changing human impacts of inhabitation towards enlivening—rather than the devitalising status quo. This resacralisation of matter is positioned in relationship to religious naturalism and its realisation through the concept of uncertain technologies. The first part discusses the history of the scientific concepts that comprise the vital materiality of electron flow and how this is expressed as a primal force that comprises ‘bare life', or zoë, which simultaneously enables the development of structure and change over time. The second part of this essay explores this integrating thesis of continual electron flow in practice by testing the concept through the construction of a ‘living' system, or utilities infrastructure, for a household, which invites specific notions of haunting and protocols of care that sustain a sacred ecomaterialist worldview. Exemplified by the Living Architecture project, an uncertain technology is exemplified in a microbial, metabolic source of electrons that can be directed and designed to interact with various types of matter in ways that confer homes with some of the characteristics of bare life, thus they are ‘living'. This practice of Architecting Zoë uses electron flow as a material and epistemic agent to generate a circular economy of exchange within the household (an oikonomy) ultimately replacing modern utilities systems. Transforming our waste into vital exchanges, our ‘living' homes can express characteristics such as sensitivity, metabolism and even intelligence, raising ethical considerations through new protocols of care and coinhabitation, enacted through sacred ecomaterialist rituals that transform the impacts of human inhabitation into life-promoting actions.
