THE EVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORY OF THE GREEN BUILDING CONCEPT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES

Abstract

The growing diversity of approaches to green building has significantly expanded its conceptual field, encompassing sustainable, low-carbon, circular, regenerative, and nature-positive construction, as well as whole-life assessment and human well-being perspectives. This study aims to reconstruct the evolutionary trajectory of the green building concept and identify the patterns underlying the expansion of its subject matter, system boundaries, and criteria for assessing the environmental and economic performance of construction activities. The research is based on a structured corpus of 220 scientific publications selected through an iterative search strategy consistent with the principles of systematic literature review. A comparative analysis was conducted using a unified set of criteria, including terminology, the central object of research, dominant assessment criteria, system boundaries, and theoretical foundations. The findings reveal a cumulative and branching pattern of conceptual development. Emerging approaches do not replace earlier ones but extend, specialise, and interact with them, producing an increasingly differentiated conceptual field. The evolution of green building is characterised by an expansion of the object of analysis from the individual building and its operational performance to the entire life cycle, material and carbon flows, value chains, territorial systems, and broader socio-ecological interactions. At the same time, assessment criteria have expanded from energy and resource efficiency to include decarbonisation, circularity, climate resilience, human health and well-being, ecosystem restoration, and positive environmental impacts. The findings provide grounds for interpreting green building as an integrative meta-concept that encompasses interrelated research approaches within a common theoretical field. Its contemporary development is therefore characterised by increasing differentiation, interaction, and integration of conceptual perspectives rather than by the linear succession of individual concepts.