CLUAA
Chicago, United States
Clare Lyster is a professor at the UIC School of Architecture. Her work sits at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure, with emphasis on how logistical, metabolic, and socio-technical systems territorialize the built environment and the implications of this for design. She operates a design-based research practice called CLUAA that produces work across multiple platforms. She is the author of Learning from Logistics: How Networks Change Cities (Birkhäuser, 2016) and the forthcoming, Future Farm Forms (ACTAR, 2025); is co-editor of Third Coast Atlas: A Prelude to a Plan (ACTAR, 2017), and States of Entanglement: Data in the Irish Landscape (ACTAR, 2021). She is a member of ANNEX, an interdisciplinary arts collaboration that curated Entanglement, the Irish Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. Clare was awarded a 2019 UIC Researcher and Scholar of the Year Award; the CADA Distinguished Faculty Award 2019-20; the 2019 SOM Foundation Research Prize, among other prizes.
20205 Biennial Project
Project Overview
Farm Park
This project combines what are considered incompatible functions—storage infrastructure, food production, and public space—into one holistic ecology. It features modular data racks and precision farming—stacked grow trays, tubes, and espalier fruit trees—arranged within hedgerows that form outdoor rooms near a medical campus. Waste heat from the data servers is captured and redirected to warm greenhouses, enabling year-round food production in northern climates. A service corridor allows easy management of servers and crop harvesting, which supplies the hospital cafeteria. Farm Park transforms data center heat—a normally wasted byproduct—into a valuable resource, creating an industrial symbiosis. This design supports patients, staff, and visitors with spaces to gather, while providing local, efficient data storage and sustainable food production in one integrated system.
Venue
View more840 N. Michigan Ave
Address
840 N. Michigan Ave
Description
The Biennial expands its footprint downtown with the opening of its fifth site at 840 N. Michigan Avenue, transforming more than 65,000 square feet of space on the Magnificent Mile into a dynamic hub for art, design, and dialogue.





