James Murphy Quotes

I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887-1976) lived and painted.

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.

Lofts were never supposed to be homes. They were vacant old factories and warehouses, taken over by artists looking for cheap space and good light.

If we're talking about the urban landscape as an advanced, forward-thinking art form, there must be some intellectual thinking involved.

Where I grew up was a place called Salford, which was the industrial heartland of Manchester. And where I lived in Salford, I could walk to the center of Manchester within about 20 minutes. So I lived really close to the center.

LA is such a crumbling mess of a city. Basically in all my years of travelling, I haven't found another city in the western world that interest me as much as Los Angeles - which might sound like heresy, but most cities, history has already happened and the people living there are sort of living on the bones of the thousand years of history that's already happened there. Whereas LA is always reinventing itself.

I just like a dirty, crumbling city. The Gotham I imagine is enticing and horrifying at the same time.

In the '60s when I was a student, there was this campaign to destroy 75 percent of the old buildings in Paris, replacing them with modern architecture. I realized this as a dangerous utopia. This modern vision did not understand the richness of the city. Thankfully, such destruction did not happen.

A city is like a family portrait - you don't tear it up if you don't like your uncle's nose.

There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living.

When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.

Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.

And then, build a bustling wonderful city of the 21st century, with a restoration of a spectacular skyline, which Manhattan, of course, needs. So, that is really the design as a whole.

Butte was once a grand city. To me, that city is like one big stage for Edward Hopper. You could put your camera anywhere, and you felt you were looking at his paintings.

Good and bad make up a city.

I definitely think New York is a very, very vibrant, wonderful city, but I certainly, of course, can't help but miss a lot of the stuff that's no longer there.

Tel Aviv is new, built on the sand dunes north of Jaffa in the 1890s, about the same time Miami was founded. The cities bear a resemblance in size, site, climate, and architecture, which ranges from the bland to the fancifully bland.

I would like to invest more of my brain space in understanding the history of my city, because whenever I learn about the history of Detroit, it's always so fascinating, from a little kind of beaver-trading post to the place where automobiles were manufactured.

Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.

Buildings like Penn Station attract our protective instincts not only because of their beauty but because we fear what will come to replace them.

I had a lot of romanticised ideas of what Detroit was like, but I didn't get there until I was 30, and it was very different than I had imagined it.

There are a lot of historical lofts in Houston, and it's amazing for me that a lot of them were built in the 1920s. I love the exposed bricks and the very industrial stuff.

Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

I didn't really experience any hardship like people tend to think of when they hear the words 'Detroit, Michigan.' I think Big Sean is a much better ambassador for the city.

I love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn't have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.