Let's take a look at a sentence describing a property, equivalent to english sentences such as "the university is old". In this case, Chinese use no verb for "to be", but instead using the word "very", where this word has a very weak meaning. Furthermore, you must also remember that Chinese do not use articles, such as "the" and "a":
For example:
大学很旧 (dà xué hěn jiù) - Literal: university [very] old - The university is old.

There is another way of forming this sentence. We can use the verb "to be" in combination with the determiner particle (DP):
For example:
大学是旧的 (dà xué shì jiù de) - Literal: university is old [DP] - The university is old

This way of expressing a property is usually used when you want to emphasize something, it is pretty much always used with colors.

Negation
Negation is usually made with the word 不 (bù), this always applies to this type of sentence, in which case 很 (hěn, very) is not not needed anymore:
For example:
大学不旧 (dà xué bú jiù) - Literal: university not old - The university is not old

And another way of expressing this using the verb "to be":
For example:
大学不是旧的 (dà xué bú shì jiù de) - Literal: university not is old [DP] - The university is not old.