The Essex Centre for the Arts, Aquatics & Recreation is a multi-use facility jointly developed for the Town of Essex and the Essex Board of Education. The Essex center is located on the site of the Essex District High School, twenty miles southeast of the city of Windsor. The project included a new double gymnasium/auditorium, a new 25 metre swimming pool, leisure swimming pool, weight training room, meeting room, and ancillary office & support facilities

This programme sought to address the shortfalls in the school programme, which lacked adequate gymnasium space, and to provide an auditorium large enough to accommodate the entire student body. The Essex community had also been seeking to establish an indoor swimming pool programme for past two decades.

The building programme is oriented to the south side of the school on a site which combines the original property with additional lands provided by the Town of Essex through the closure of College Street. The site was further altered to reorganize the front entrance and parking loop along the east face of the building in a manner that established a distinct entrance for the Centre.

The designed arranged the new building components along the south edge of the school and placed both the double gymnasium/auditorium and the swimming pools and in close proximity to the two remaining gymnasia and their related change room facilities. The double gymnasium/auditorium is located in place of the demolished gymnasium/stage, while the swimming pools were placed within an existing service court area. These two elements are joined through their public lobby areas by a concourse which bisects the public washrooms and public meeting room.

With the orientation of the gymnasium/auditorium along a north-south axis perpendicular to the former gymnasium/stage, an additional public corridor has been created which spans between the main lobby and the interior garden courtyard at the heart of the school. This access generates the public galleria of the school and the point of interface between the public and the school.

The 25 metre swimming pool is set at an angle to the building grid to provide varied seating and teaching areas around the pool's perimeter. The Leisure Pool combines a raised Training Pool, whirlpool and waterslide within a highly articulated form and generates a variety of programme possibilities. Both Pools are barrier-free and the two elevators added as part of this project have made the entire school accessible at all levels.