Description:

Bead Journey is a design for an Early Childhood Education Centre on Wellesley Street East in Auckland's CBD. Following the closure of a previously well-loved centre, I have set out to reintegrate and restore a sense of vitality to the site. A large bronze bead rolls along timber tracks through the centre as a thoughtful and memorable gesture to the children’s learning experience by orienting them through their daily routines. The bead meets them at the arrival threshold (which can often leave children feeling unsettled). It is personified as a companion to accompany the children as they settle by rolling through each track at a child's eye-level, activating key steps in their their daily routine, triggering interactive elements. The children’s experience to settle is reflected by the motion of the bead which settles alongside fixtures and furnishings, reminding and teaching the children about their daily routines. 
The interior is organised around four bead tracks, each designed to map the duration of the daily routine. Children encounter a bead track in the lobby, play/dining room and the collaborative learning space. The bead is moved between the tracks by staff and employed as a teaching strategy to initiate new learning activities. The tracks soft decline orients the bead to settle alongside art supply cabinetry, hand-washing tapware and reading bookcases to invite the children to engage in collaborative learning activities. A glimpse of bronze as the bead rolls through, animating the space's inhabitance. An interplay between dark and light materiality, recessed lines and patient curves reference the gesture of the bead at alternating scales. The ribbed clay exterior alludes to the bead track that the children encounter when they arrive in the lobby space. Ceiling-suspended tables in the main play space shift along a wheel and track system to compress and decompress the play space for dining. The urban density of the courtyard is softened by the sand dune and seesaw terrain, referencing the motion of the rising and falling bead.
The ceiling in both the lobby and collaborative space is contoured to accompany the bead track line and settle at the children’s height to create spatial intimacy. When the children arrive to hang their belongings, bespoke bag hooks in the lobby spring down and release the bead at durational spacings, activating the space to perform. As the bead rolls to the next hook, the sonic quality of the bronze bead alerts the children that their friend has arrived. Gestures of settling, cranking and dispensing the bead through the track invites the bead to become a performance of time, celebrating moments of the quotidian, enriching the children's everyday learning experience to arrive, settle and engage.