The Royal College of Art started life in 1837 as the Government School of Design, located in Somerset House in the Strand, London. Following the Great Exhibition of 1851, this relatively small-scale operation was radically transformed to accommodate art as well as design, leading the institution to be rechristened the National Art Training School at its new home in South Kensington. In 1896 it became the Royal College of Art. In 1967 the College was granted a Royal Charter, endowing it with university status and the power to grant its own degrees. The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design was formed in 1991; its origins go back to the Design Research Unit at the RCA in the early 1960s.