Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship at Montana State University combines state-of-the-art teaching facilities, flexible learning and gathering spaces, and forward-thinking sustainable design. The 52,875 square-foot LEED-Gold certified building is a campus destination that fosters interaction and inter-disciplinary collaboration between students and faculty. Two-story forum spaces at the ground and third floors are the core of the informal learning environment, while a grand stair knits the four floors together. The forums offer informal seating and workspaces along with technology-driven trading pits. Quiet study niches provide views of the Bridger Mountains, and classroom “porches” offer space for students and faculty to confer after class.
The building organization places classrooms at the south, faculty offices and administration at the north, and open forum spaces housing informal learning and gathering spaces in the middle. The deeper, generously glazed classrooms on the south allow for sunlight and good temperature control and smaller offices to the north with punched windows reduce heat loss while still providing ample daylight in these shallower spaces. Jabs Hall employs 53 closed-loop geo-exchange wells for heating and cooling, a transpired solar collection wall that augments heating, natural daylighting, low-flow plumbing, LED lighting, recycled and locally sourced counters and stone, and hundred-year building skin systems. Mechanical systems integrate with district energy systems, enabling Jabs Hall to harvest excess heat from adjacent lab buildings.
Honoring its site, the Jabs Hall office bar is clad with terra cotta panels in colors referential to the masonry of Montana Hall, the most iconic historic structure on campus. Classroom spaces are clad in dark vertical zinc panels, and, in combination with the stratified pattern of the terra cotta, emulate the geology of the nearby Bridger Mountains, Yellowstone and Gallatin basins.