Tracey Sharp is an Early Learning Consultant and Interior Architectural Designer with more than 30 years of experience across the early learning sector. She brings a deep understanding of how environments shape children's learning, wellbeing, behaviour, and sense of belonging, and she has built a career helping approved providers, educational leaders, teachers, and educators create thoughtful, joyful spaces that support children, families, and teams alike.
"I designed the Audrey service to be calm, to be a point of connection and to encourage capability in everyone," Tracey explains.
Tracey is innovative, detail-oriented and clever, and she thinks deeply about how a child experiences a space, giving every child the best possible opportunity to thrive and enjoy a positive learning experience.
We sat down with Tracey to find out what sits behind the design choices at Audrey and why the environment matters so much in a child's early years.
Tracey completed her degree in early childhood education and during her work as an early childhood teacher, she noticed just how much the physical space around children shapes their learning, wellbeing, and behaviour.
"About ten years in, I really felt like the interior architecture was a big part of early learning," she says.
That spark sent her back to university to study interior architecture, with a focus on what a space says to the people inside it - how it speaks to children, how it invites them in, how it shapes the way it gets used, and how it makes a child feel. For Tracey, that meant designing first and foremost for children in their first five years.
Tracey’s teaching background gives her a unique lens. When a child struggles to settle or engage, she looks first to the space around them rather than to the child. What is the environment asking of that child? What could it offer instead? A lower shelf, a clearer path, a quiet corner still within sight of an educator? Those changes look small, but they move a child from waiting to be helped to getting on with it independently - building competence, confidence, and real influence over their own day.
A few main pillars guide every decision Tracey makes when she designs a space for children.
Nervous system regulation
Tracey knows children need to feel calm and grounded before they can truly learn and play.
"If you're not regulated, then it's almost impossible for you to learn," she says. "I really just want children to feel calm and happy and know where they are and feel grounded in that space."
"Children in early learning already navigate the big feeling of separating from their families each day, so a calm environment gives them a warm and steady starting point."
Blank space that invites without overwhelming
Tracey deliberately left parts of the environment simple and open, so educators, children and families can shape them together over time, creating a sense of belonging and community.
"It's going to evolve over time as the educators include different types of furniture and play equipment, responding to the children's needs and interests," she says.
She has intentionally kept some spaces simple, anticipating everything educators and children will bring to them.
A space for play, discovery and joy
Audrey is designed to flex and grow alongside the people who use it. That flexibility opens endless possibility, giving children, families and educators room for play, discovery, and everyday joy.
At Gowrie NSW, play is the curriculum. Children have a right to play, to be heard, and to have a genuine say in how their days unfold - and an environment either makes that right real or quietly gets in the way. Audrey was designed so that it does the first.
That's why the Audrey environment hands so much back to children. Children shape their own learning here: choosing where to be, what to gather around, and how a space is used today compared with yesterday. Educators read those choices and respond, so the curriculum follows children's emerging interests.
Tracey's most thoughtful touches all come from the same place: a passion for function, care, and empowering children as capable young learners. Every detail is designed to build a child's sense of agency and give them a genuine feeling of influence over their environment.
The kitchen sits at the heart of Audrey, just as it would in a family home.
"When you're walking into the space, if you can smell the cooking, it’s grounding," Tracey says.
At Audrey, children can see and smell food being prepared, learning through their senses, their observations, and their relationships with the people around them - an invitation to curiosity, conversation, and community. Because children's learning is supported by and connected to everyday routines and real-life experiences.
Real timber flooring runs throughout the centre, and natural light streams into every room, so children feel supported in a space that is genuinely theirs. Large windows connect the inside to the outside, so green space, plants, trees, and sunshine are almost always in sight.
The transition between indoor and outdoor areas is seamless, with no lips or tracks to navigate. Seamless connection between spaces makes Audrey accessible to every child, whatever their age or stage of physical development, and encourages the freedom of movement that a strong early childhood curriculum depends on.
Sightlines matter too. Children can see where they're heading and how to find their way back. That sense of orientation gives children independence, safety, and security in the same breath: they can move through the space on their own terms, held by educators who stay close by.
For Tracey, great design is judged by how people feel in a space, not just how it photographs.
"What grounds me when I'm designing spaces is how it's going to feel," she says.
That philosophy runs through every part of Audrey Early Education and Care, from its warm, cheerful sensory environment to its flexible, connected layout. It gives children the chance to build capability and independence from the very start, and it gives educators and families a space that genuinely supports and delights them too.
Audrey is designed to invite meaningful learning. A place built for respectful relationships, where children are seen, heard, and responded to. Children's rights and empowerment have been considered at every step and we can’t wait to see it come to life with children, families, educators, and the learning moments that follow.