ABSTRACT
Educational Facilities Laboratories, or EFL, was an independent voice in the American debate on postwar education and architecture, and a force behind the adoption of the open school. Founded in 1958 as a collaboration between the Ford Foundation, the American Institute of Architects and Teachers College of Columbia University, EFL enjoyed immediate visibility, and its influence grew substantially throughout the next twenty years. EFL not only granted funds for the study of facilities-related problems, new buildings and building types but also brought architects, administrators and industry leaders together to discuss the problems of school building and American education. These collaborative endeavours, from academic conferences to workshops and charrettes, made EFL a unique node in the larger conversation about school architecture and an active agent in stimulating new ideas. In this chapter, I examine how the organisation established a language of change, how it nurtured experimentalism and how it transformed school buildings. The rich debate and an open-ended process of design helped shape the material reality of postwar American schools.
