Exhibition Road

Exhibition Road
	Exhibition Road following opening of shared space scheme during 2012
Former name(s)	Prince's Gate
Namesake	The Great Exhibition
Location	Albertopolis, Westminster, London, United Kingdom
Postal code	SW7
Nearest Tube station	South Kensington
Coordinates	51°29′56.3″N 0°10′27.3″W / 51.498972°N 0.174250°W
North end	Hyde Park (Alexandra Gate), Kensington Road
Major; junctions	Imperial College Road, Cromwell Road
South end	Thurloe Street, South Kensington tube station
Other
Known for	Imperial College London, Science Museum, V&A, Natural History Museum

Exhibition Road is a street in South Kensington, London which is home to several major museums and academic establishments, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.

Overview

The road gets its name from the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was held just inside Hyde Park at the northern end of the road. After the central road in the area, Queen's Gate, it is the second thoroughfare in what was once Albertopolis.

It provides access to many nationally significant institutions, including:

Victoria and Albert Museum
Science Museum
Natural History Museum (which incorporates the former Geological Museum)
Royal Geographical Society, at the north end in Kensington Gore
Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, at the north end in Princes Gate
Imperial College London (directly and via Imperial College Road)
Pepperdine University Abroad
Jagiellonian University London Study Centre in the Polish Hearth Club^[2]
London Goethe Institute
The Hyde Park Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Shared space

A design competition for plans of how to improve the street's design to reflect its cultural importance was held in 2003 by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The competition was won by the architectural firm Dixon Jones for a shared space scheme for the road and surrounding streets which would give pedestrians greater priority whilst still allow some vehicular traffic at a reduced speed.^[3] ^[4] The project also aimed to improve the artistic and architectural merit of the streetscape.^[5] The scheme was completed ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.^[6] Since the completion of the revised streetscape, its design has been criticised for increasing the accident rate in the locale, with reported conflict between motor vehicles and pedestrians due to the unified surface design across Exhibition Road.^[7]