Storey Hall, located at 342–344 Swanston Street in Melbourne, Australia, is part of the RMIT City campus of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). It is home to RMIT Gallery, considered to be Melbourne's most vibrant art space, with a constantly changing exhibition program of architecture, craft, contemporary art, design, fashion, and fine art.
The Hall is a 19th century building constructed in 1887 as a meeting hall once owned by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which had been acquired by RMIT in 1957 and subsequently renovated, and officially opened in 1996.
The architectural design of the refurbished section of the building consists primarily of Penrose tiles, which are arranged to form pentagons. It was completed in 1995 to the design of Ashton Raggatt McDougall. The refurbished section is also externally adorned with Penrose tiles and is also styled with ruffles, keys and suspender belts to represent the Suffragettes, who formally used the building as a meeting hall.
The hall was named after the Storey family; John Storey (Junior), who founded the RMIT Student Union in 1944, and Sir John Storey (Senior), who left a large bequest to RMIT—in order to found the John Storey Junior Memorial Scholarships in memory of his son, whose studies were cut short in 1947 when he died of leukaemia at age 22.
The vaults of Storey Hall house the smaller RMIT First Site Gallery, which is operated by the RMIT Union, and has a focus on new media, as well as a cafe named re:vault.
Read more about Storey Hall: Key Influences, Gallery, Awards
Famous quotes containing the words storey and/or hall:
“She does all right. She does all right. She just put up the shutters and stopped living.”
—David Storey (b. 1933)
“While there we heard the Indian fire his gun twice.... This sudden, loud, crashing noise in the still aisles of the forest, affected me like an insult to nature, or ill manners at any rate, as if you were to fire a gun in a hall or temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)