Kaarin Taipale is Senior Researcher at Center for
Knowledge and Innovation Research of the Helsinki School of Economics
(CKIR) at the Aalto University School of Economics, in Helsinki,
Finland.
She is Chair and coordinator of the UN-initiated
Marrakech Task Force on Sustainable Buildings and Construction with
Finland as lead country. The Task Force advocates the need for local
and national policies and legislation to secure greater sustainability
in the construction, use and maintenance of the built environment. The
first focus area of the Task Force has been energy – public policies to
promote energy efficiency, energy savings, and an increased use of
renewable energy in the built environment. The Task Force organizes
workshops in all regions of the world and is currently working on,
amongst other tools, a “Sustainable Building Checklist” for
decision-makers and citizens to increase awareness of the challenges
and opportunities for sustainable building.
A Finnish
national, Kaarin Taipale studied architecture at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland, and has also
obtained a master’s degree in historic preservation from Columbia
University in New York, USA. Her areas of expertise are urban
sustainability, and the impact of globalization on cities. She obtained
her PhD from the Helsinki University of Technology with her
dissertation: Cities for sale: How economic globalization transforms the local public sphere.
Kaarin
Taipale has worked as an architect in Zurich, New York and Helsinki;
later as the editor of the Finnish Architectural Review and for ten
years as the chief executive of the Building Department of the City of
Helsinki. She has also held the positions of visiting professor at
Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, 2005-2006, and
senior adviser of ICLEI World Secretariat in Toronto, Canada, 2004.
Among her publications is the report Local and global – the role of local government in a sustainable world.
As
Chair of ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability in 2000-2003 she
was a political representative of local government, and expert on urban
issues in several United Nations and other intergovernmental meetings
including the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg,
2002. Kaarin Taipale became a Council Member of the World Future
Council in 2007. She was awarded the Order of the White Rose of
Finland, Chevalier of the 1st Class, ordained by the President of
Finland in 1999.
Kaarin Taipale was a member of the global Holcim Awards jury in 2006. She was a member of the Concluding Panel Discussion at the inaugural Holcim Forum 2004 in Zurich and was a member of the Academic Committee for the 2nd International Holcim Forum 2007 in Shanghai.
[last updated 24-Aug-10]