London 2012: John Gold Discusses First Sustainable Olympics Mar. 4

Story posted February 27, 2010

John Gold, an urban and architectural historian at Oxford Brookes University, will give a talk about the first-ever "sustainable" Olympic Games scheduled for 2012 in London, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 4, 2010, in Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center.

Gold's lecture, titled "London 2012, Olympic Legacy, and the Challenge of Sustainable Urbanism," is presented as part of Bowdoin's Climate Days series, which is showcasing innovators who address climate change. The lecture is open to the public and admission is free.

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A rendering of the 2012 games from architects Gerkan, Marg und Partner.

At the heart of its bid for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games, London promised to offer the first sustainable games, setting new standards for the world to follow. The design of the Olympics—to be carried out by a number of leading international figures in the realm of architecture—will maximize sustainability through its buildings, and infrastructure, and through the staging of the games themselves. Olympic Park—located in an area of East London in dire need of regeneration—will ultimately become one of the largest urban parks ever created in Europe. Though a much-heralded episode in the history of London and the Olympics, the sustainable games of 2012 have also proved controversial, as Gold will discuss in his talk.

John Gold is professor of urban historical geography and a member of the Institute for Historical and Cultural Research at Oxford Brooks University, Oxford, UK.

His research is leading him to the final volume in his trilogy of books on the experiential history of the Modern Movement in British architecture. The first phase, covered in his book The Experience of Modernism (Routledge, 1997), examined the anticipation of future urban forms and patterns of city life by modern architects between 1928 and 1953. The second phase, examined in his recently published book, The Practice of Modernism (Routledge, 2007), investigated the relationship between vision and practice in the years of metropolitan reconstruction (1954-72). The final book, The Legacy of Modernism (forthcoming), will use the same blend of oral historical and documentary research to consider the continuing experience of architectural modernism after the denouement of the 1970s up to the end of the twentieth century and reflect on modernism's lasting impact on our towns and cities.

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A postcard picturing the first Olympics: the 1896 Games of the I Olympiad, Athens, Greece.

He is also the coauthor of Representing the Environment (Routledge, 2004) on the cultural politics of environmental representation, which was jointly written with George Revill, and two books (with Margaret M. Gold) on the role and staging of cultural festivals: Cities of Culture: Staging International Festivals and the Urban Agenda, 1851-2000 (Ashgate Press, 2005), and the edited collection Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning, and the World's Games, 1896-2012 (published in Routledge's Studies in History, Planning and the Environment series, 2007). He is now working on a companion volume on Festival Cities: Culture, Planning and Urban Life since 1945 (again for publication in Routledge's Studies in History, Planning and the Environment series) and has been commissioned to compile a four-volume set on The Olympics and the City: sources and interpretations.

Support for Gold's Bowdoin talk is provided by the Mellon Foundation, and the event is sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program; the departments of Athletics, History, and Visual Arts; the Office of Sustainable Bowdoin; and the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good's Seeking the Common Good Series: Innovation for Change.

For more information call 207-725-3396

Read The Bowdoin Orient article here.

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