ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that architecture and urban design have both aesthetic and rhetorical purpose and power. It explores the purpose works within social structures of remembrance, commemoration, public history, and public memory. The chapter describes the specific example of architecture and urban design can be understood as a monument that is both intentional and unintentional. Limited scholarship exists on the topic of the Civic Arena, with the exception of Joseph Trotter and Jared Day, who address the Civic Arena within the larger context of the black experience in Pittsburgh through the lens of African American Studies. The Civic Arena is a memory-place that recalls two competing historical narratives of Pittsburgh: the city’s post-industrial revival and the erasure of the historically black Hill District neighborhood. After the Civic Arena’s primary use as an event venue and stadium for the Pittsburgh Penguins ended in 2010, it was repositioned as an unintentional monument.
