This article is compiled based on the presentation delivered at the forum China’s Urbanization Pathways Under the Dual Carbon Goals: Cutting-Edge Reflections, one of the series of forums marking the 15th Anniversary of the PKU-Lincoln Center on November 5, 2022, and has been reviewed by the speaker Dr. Qiu Baoxing.
Speaker: Qiu Baoxing, Former Vice Minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development; Chair of the China Committee of the International Water Association (IWA); Chairman of the Chinese Society for Urban Studies; Member of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences.
Abstract
This presentation introduces the definition, typologies and evaluation criteria of green buildings, sorts out their evolutionary trajectory and five developmental phases in China. It elaborates on core characteristics of green buildings including climate adaptability, diversity and full-life-cycle carbon reduction. Taking vertical landscape architecture — a future green building typology suited for southern China — as a typical case, it illustrates the vital functions of green buildings in energy conservation, emission abatement and environmental improvement. The speech also prospects management mechanisms for green buildings and their application scenarios in future old residential community renewal and human settlement optimization.
I. Evolutionary Trajectory and Technical Misconceptions of Green Buildings
More than a decade ago, China issued its national evaluation standard for green buildings, which has now entered its third edition. The standard defines a green building as "a structure that realizes energy, water and material conservation throughout its full life cycle and maintains a sound indoor air environment". Such buildings must embody three core attributes: safety, livability and ecological sustainability, collectively known as the "iron triangle" of green buildings.
Figure 1 The "Iron Triangle" of Green Buildings
The development of green buildings in China has gone through five landmark phases:
Phase 1 (March 2005): Six central ministries jointly hosted the First National Green Building Conference, putting forward that China’s building energy conservation should align with internationally recognized green building standards.
Phase 2 (March 2006): A Vice Premier of the State Council attended the Second National Green Building Conference to mobilize nationwide implementation. The country’s first national green building standard, Evaluation Standard for Green Building (GB/T 50378-2006), was officially released at the conference.
Phase 3 (March 2008): The China Green Building Council (China GBC), affiliated to the Chinese Society for Urban Studies, was founded.
Phase 4 (2013 onward): The Green Building Action Plan was officially issued. The National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) set a target to raise the share of green buildings in urban new construction from 42% in 2012 to 50% by 2020.
Phase 5 (2015): At the Paris Climate Summit, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly stated that China would adopt a package of policies including developing green buildings and low-carbon transport and establishing a national carbon emissions trading market to forge a modern development paradigm featuring harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature.
These five milestones mark successive breakthroughs in China’s green building development.
Over the past decade, green building typologies have diversified continuously to meet evolving societal demands: ranging from energy-efficient buildings to passive houses, low-energy buildings, nearly zero-energy buildings and zero-energy buildings. In terms of construction systems, the industry has advanced from prefabricated buildings to modular buildings, intelligent buildings and all-steel structures, with 3D-printed buildings poised to emerge as a new typology in the future. From the perspective of human-building interaction, age-friendly housing, healthy buildings and vertical landscape buildings have been developed. For rural contexts, innovations include rural green buildings, rammed-earth structures and future underground buried buildings. From the perspective of environmental and energy adaptability, active energy buildings and positive-energy buildings have been promoted; with plummeting photovoltaic costs, flexible PV-integrated positive-energy housing is entering mass application.
Figure 2 Diversified Green Building Typologies
Green building standards have been formulated for all major building categories, covering ordinary residences, office towers, factories, hospitals and hotels.
Nevertheless, six prevalent technical misconceptions and practical pitfalls have emerged in green building development that merit reflection and correction:
Blind pursuit of higher prefabrication rates and industrialization intensity: As early as the 1950s, large-panel residential buildings in China achieved a 100% prefabrication rate, with technical expertise imported from Russia and Yugoslavia. Yet these structures suffered poor seismic performance, weak thermal insulation and persistent water leakage issues, and have been gradually phased out. Prefabrication ratio alone cannot serve as a metric for building quality or energy efficiency.
Overinvestment in niche high-end technologies: Small-scale projects with exorbitant construction costs are unfit to serve as replicable green building prototypes. For instance, Amazon’s London headquarters reportedly cost tens of billions of dollars. Though equipped with cutting-edge experimental technologies, it lacks scalability and should not be blindly emulated.
Overemphasis on centralized, large-scale energy supply hubs: Many local governments prioritize tri-generation or quad-generation district energy centers relying on centralized control. In contrast, green buildings should deploy distributed air-conditioning and energy systems, which deliver precise load control to cut carbon and energy consumption.
Exclusive focus on operational carbon neutrality: Many zero-carbon buildings, communities and factories only achieve zero emissions during operational phases. Green building carbon reduction must adopt a full-life-cycle perspective, covering land, water, energy and material savings across construction, use and demolition stages, rather than focusing solely on operation.
Neglect of local climate adaptability and locally available raw materials: Rural construction should prioritize indigenous materials, hence the promotion of rammed-earth buildings. Experiments demonstrate rammed earth has twice the volumetric heat capacity of concrete; seismic-resistant modified rammed-earth structures are low-cost, highly energy-efficient and embody accumulated traditional ecological wisdom.
Prioritization of design and construction over operation and maintenance: Green buildings require meticulous upkeep to sustain energy-saving performance. While the total floor area of certified green buildings has expanded rapidly in recent years, the number of buildings obtaining operational performance labels has grown sluggishly.
Figure 3 Cumulative National Green Building Floor Area (2011–2017)
II. Core Characteristics of Green Buildings
Green buildings feature six defining attributes:
Local climate adaptability: A green building functions as an eco-friendly organic cell integrated with its surrounding climate and environment. Envelope energy-saving technologies enable building energy systems to self-regulate like birds molting feathers, dynamically adjusting energy consumption patterns to match seasonal climate shifts.
Diversity: Typological diversity constitutes the fundamental vitality of green buildings. Any design complying with the "four resource savings and one environmental protection" principle (land, energy, water, material conservation plus pollution mitigation) qualifies as green construction. Administrative mandates should not artificially restrict green building typologies. Diversified design and cluster planning represent new avenues to upgrade green building quality, avoiding monotonous, aesthetically blighted agglomerations of individually high-performance structures within organic communities and urban districts.
Full-life-cycle carbon reduction: Sustainability must be assessed across a building’s entire lifespan. Steel-framed and timber buildings deliver far lower life-cycle carbon footprints; steel structures account for over 40% of multi-story construction in the United States and Japan, yet less than 5% in China. Reinforced concrete buildings in China generate carbon emissions 10 percentage points higher than international benchmarks. Greater attention must be paid to carbon outputs embedded in building material production and supply chains.
Figure 4 Weathering Steel Buildings Aligned with the "Urban Mine" Concept
Circular zero-waste design: Buildings should function as urban mines. Following the Industrial Revolution, over 80% of exploitable mineral resources have been transferred from underground reserves to above-ground urban built stock. Structures built with weathering steel or stainless steel can be fully recycled after 100 to 200 years of service. This reduces both building operational energy use and carbon emissions from steel manufacturing, extending green building decarbonization benefits to upstream industrial sectors.
Affordability: Green buildings must remain accessible to ordinary residents. In remote, impoverished rural regions, architects should utilize local raw materials to lower embodied energy, while integrating design upgrades to boost seismic resilience and climate compatibility.
Cluster-based decarbonization synergy: Individual green buildings deliver carbon savings, yet integrated clusters achieve amplified environmental gains via coupled interconnected energy systems coordinated through digital networks. Real-time visualization of water and energy use for each unit incentivizes occupant behavioral energy conservation to further cut resource consumption.
III. Vertical Landscape Architecture: A Representative Southern Green Building Typology
Vertical landscape design dates back over 4,000 years to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Since the Industrial Revolution, diverse vertical greening models have continuously evolved and merged, with more livable iterations set to emerge in the future. Development has progressed from simple green facades to balcony gardens, modular vertical landscapes and vertical agriculture systems.
Figure 5 Interior and Exterior Views of Milan’s Bosco Verticale upon Completion
Designed and completed ten years ago by Italian architect Stefano Boeri, Bosco Verticale consists of two residential towers of 18 and 24 stories in Milan, a historic global capital of fashion and design. The towers stand out amid a neighborhood of traditional red-tiled historic architecture as iconic green landmarks with shifting seasonal vegetation. The trees planted on the facades convert absorbed carbon dioxide into renewable biomass energy and capture vast volumes of rainwater. The development offers abundant public leisure spaces, delivering a distinctive immersive experience where residents dwell amid green landscapes woven into the urban fabric.
Figure 6 Terraced Vertical Landscape Complex in Fukuoka, Japan
The terraced vertical landscape building in Fukuoka first drew my attention during my tenure as Mayor of Hangzhou in 1999. That year, Hangzhou received the sole UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour award nationwide, and I traveled to Fukuoka to accept the prize. Though a mid-sized city, Fukuoka’s landmark vertical landscape complex transformed its urban identity and became its cultural anchor. The Asia-Pacific headquarters of UN-Habitat was subsequently relocated to Fukuoka, marking the first permanent UN institution based in the city.
Figure 7 Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand
Thammasat University in Bangkok also adopts a terraced vertical landscape scheme, establishing the campus as a national benchmark for energy and water conservation. All rainwater runoff is harvested to irrigate terraced experimental farm plots where faculty and students engage in cultivation and harvesting activities. During Thailand’s prolonged hot summers, the vertical terraces provide passive evaporative cooling, slashing air-conditioning energy consumption by 50%.
Figure 8 Vertical Landscape Development in Singapore
Singapore’s Naval Village integrates commercial, residential and recreational functions with an unassuming exterior concealing a lush multi-tiered internal courtyard. Cross-section diagrams reveal layered terraced gardens offering unobstructed green views to all residents.
Figure 9 Aquaponics Building
The EU has pioneered an innovative green building typology known as aquaponics, a compound agricultural system that scientifically integrates aquaculture and hydroponics via ecological design to achieve symbiotic coexistence. The closed-loop system eliminates the need for water replacement in fish farming and synthetic fertilizers for crop cultivation. A laboratory in the Netherlands constructed a glasshouse operating on this principle, producing 40 tons of vegetables and 20 tons of fish annually through high-tech integrated design, over 50 times the vegetable yield per unit area of conventional open farmland.
IV. Conclusion
Figure 10 Vertical Landscape Building in Chengdu
Vertical landscape green buildings will see extensive application and growing market demand in multiple future scenarios:
One out of every ten blocks in urban old community renewal projects can adopt vertical landscape construction to add public green space and recreational amenities for residents.
Integrated on-site food waste processors within vertical landscape eco-systems enable local organic waste recycling, forming short, secure supply chains for urban homegrown vegetables.
During pandemic lockdowns, vertical landscape communities provide residents with mental wellness spaces and on-site safe food production capacity.
Vertical landscape architecture can form self-sufficient ecological neighborhoods and serve as the fundamental cellular units of future eco-cities.
Vertical green landscapes deliver proven public health benefits. A 2016 study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found urban residents suffer a 50% higher incidence of anxiety disorders and multiple times greater rates of mental illness compared to rural populations.
Vertical landscape development represents a pivotal upgrade path for residential green consumption. Balcony planting delivers tangible wellbeing benefits, particularly improving physical and mental health among elderly residents.
In summary, green buildings constitute an expansive, self-contained sustainable development system. Future policy should encourage innovation, piloting and empirical summarization of diverse green building technologies and typologies, while prohibiting arbitrary administrative bans on specific construction forms. Targeted management upgrades must elevate overall green building performance, embedding ecological and environmental priorities across full-life-cycle design, construction and operation processes. Green building planning should respect local natural environments and indigenous cultural heritage to align with long-term public interests. Widespread pilot deployment of green building models will test the scalability of closed-loop microcirculation systems, laying the groundwork for a citywide circular and low-carbon economic framework.
Compiled by: Liu Junyang
