There’s a new series of architectural debates in London: Turncoats. The initiators – Phineas Harper, Robert Mull and Maria Smith – are fed up with the current state of discussions about architecture. Organising six theatrically staged events – Quit Architecture Now, Consultation Con, Vanity Publishing, The Gender Agenda, Ornament is Crime is Crime and Toss Posh Tosh – they want to create an environment in which these fundamental problems in architecture, urban development and its media can be “rugby tackled”. I talked to Phineas Harper about Turncoats, ahead of its imperatively titled opening debate on November 5.

MM: What is Turncoats?

Phineas Harper: An idea, a hunch, a shot in the dark. Turncoats is a series of punchy debates aiming to ruffle feathers in mainstream architectural discourse and turn the format of panel discussions on its head. It is an experiment in how the profession debates key issues bringing together leading figures from across the profession and beyond.

How did Turncoats come into being?

Like all revolutions Turncoats began in the pub. Most architectural debates are incredibly dull. We’ve become used to lukewarm love-ins where everybody on the stage is too polite to say anything even remotely challenging. We wanted to challenge that. My co-conspirators, Robert Mull and Maria Smith, and I were regularly finding ourselves on panels or in audiences at these events wondering what and who they were actually for. So we decided to create a series we actually wanted to go to.

You write that one of the problems with architectural debates is that they are elitist. How could all those “rubbish architectural debates”, as you describe them, be different? How do you think we can make sensible talk about architecture and cities more accessible to a non-highbrow audience?

For a discussion to be sensible in the first place it can’t be highbrow. Architecture is in no way the closeted reserve of aristocrats as it once was, but that change has been the triumph of social and political progress rather than anything intrinsic to the profession. Our final debate starts with the polemical argument that dwindling professional power is a direct consequence of an institutional broad privileging of middle class backgrounds and upbringings. That’s a deliberately theatrical proposition but one which touches a nerve.

You told me that no recording equipment will be permitted at the Turncoats debates. Can you say anything about that? Are you not going to record anything? Can I bring a pen and paper?

There’s this pressure to film everything right now. You’ve gone to the trouble of gathering interesting people to dispense pearls of wisdom, why not stick them on camera and reach out to an online audience? I understand this argument but believe it is based on a false premise. For me, great debate is not a static spectacle to be watched through the lens of a camera but a dynamic participatory process relying as much if not more on the energy and contribution of the audience as the panel, no matter how star studded.

Secondly we’re trying to create a permissive atmosphere where all can speak freely. I believe that’s harder to achieve when your every word is being captured by recording equipment or tweeted to the world in real time. Panel and audience will be asked to seal their phones away in specially provided envelopes on arrival.

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What element or topic of Turncoats are you most looking forward to?

It’s a potent mix and hard to pick one. Some of the debates are taking on themes widely pondered in the pub but rarely in public, like the dark side of community consultation or possible flaws in the profession’s feminism. But I am especially interested in question of minimalism as a form of architectural class warfare – that’s a big proposition bringing together inequality, decoration, economics and taste.

What will happen after the six events?

We’ve already been approached by architects all over the world interested in launching their own take on the project. We’re in conversations about taking the format, attitude and proposition of Turncoats to three more continents and there are also plans fermenting about Turncoats 2 back in the UK. Our first release of tickets sold out in less than 12 hours, something has struck a chord. People want change – and that’s a condition from which anything can happen.

• Phineas Harper is Deputy Director of The Architectural Foundation, part of the editorial board of The Architectural Review and one of the initiators of Turncoats.  
• Mark Minkjan is an urban and architectural geographer and editor-in-chief at Failed Architecture.