Every now and again on social media, the obser­va­tion cir­cu­lates that Amer­i­cans look back so fond­ly on their col­lege years because nev­er again do they get to live in a well-designed walk­a­ble com­mu­ni­ty. The orga­ni­za­tion of col­lege cam­pus­es does much to shape that expe­ri­ence, but so do the build­ings them­selves. “Peo­ple often say that col­lege is the best four years of your life,” says archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er in the new Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, “but it was also like­ly that it was some of the best archi­tec­ture you’ve been around as well.” He goes on to iden­ti­fy, explain, and con­tex­tu­al­ize the five build­ing styles most com­mon­ly seen on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­pus­es: colo­nial, Col­le­giate Goth­ic, mod­ernism, bru­tal­ism, and post­mod­ernism. For exam­ples of colo­nial cam­pus archi­tec­ture, look no fur­ther than the Ivy League, only one of whose schools was built after the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence — whose author, Thomas Jef­fer­son, lat­er designed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, draw­ing much inspi­ra­tion (if not always first-hand) from ancient Greece and Rome. “Iron­i­cal­ly, after the US declared inde­pen­dence, new­er schools want­ed …