BRUNSWICK — John Gold, an urban and architectural historian at Oxford University, will give a talk about the first-ever “sustainable” Olympic Games scheduled for 2012 in London.

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 leading international architects — will maximize sustainability through its buildings, infrastructure and the staging of the games. 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, “London 2012, Olympic Legacy, and the Challenge of Sustainable Urbanism.”

The Thursday, March 4, lecture is open to the public with free admission. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium in the Visual Arts Center on the Bowdoin College campus.

Gold is professor of urban historical geography and a member of the Institute for Historical and Cultural Research at Oxford Brooks University, Oxford, in the United Kingdom. He is the author of a series of books on modernism in architecture, as well as “Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning, and the World’s Games, 1896-2012.”

For more information call 725-3396.