Stephen G. Breyer is retiring from the highest court in the land but won’t leave his role as a judge of the world’s best-known architecture prize. The spokeswoman for the Pritzker Prize confirmed that Breyer, 83, who announced last week that he would step down from the U.S. Supreme Court, will continue on the Pritzker jury. Breyer joined the jury in 2011 and is currently the longest serving among its eight members. (The 2022 Pritzker laureate is expected to be named in March.)
His interest in architecture first came to light with his role in the design of the John Joseph Moakley federal courthouse in Boston, which opened in 1999. As the Chief Judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeals, Breyer was instrumental in the selection of the late Henry Cobb of Pei, Cobb, Freed, as architect of the new courthouse, and the judge later wrote a foreword to the book, “Celebrating the Courthouse: A Guide for Architects, Their Clients and the Public.” Critic Martin C. Pedersen spoke to Breyer in July 2018 about his special connection to architecture. In the interview, just re-posted on Common Edge and published below, it is clear that Breyer’s belief that “law requires both a head and a heart” applies, as well, to his ideas about design.
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