Green Learning through Spatial Experience: A Systematic Review of Cultural Awareness of Architectural Heritage

This study presents a systematic review that explores the contribution of green learning, through spatial experience, to the promotion of cultural awareness of architectural heritage. Although green learning is often defined in literature in terms of environmental literacy and ecological performance, this study redefines green learning as a comprehensive educational strategy that incorporates cultural sustainability, place-based learning, and affective learning in the heritage environment. A systematic search of large academic databases (covering the period between 2010 and 2025) was used to select 72 empirical studies, whose data were qualitatively coded using thematic codes in the MAXQDA 24 software. The deductive coding framework was used on three analytical axes: green learning orientations, spatial pedagogical strategies, and sustainability awareness outcomes with respect to heritage. Dominating patterns and conceptual gaps across areas of research were identified through the use of comparative tools. The results show that there is a significant differentiation in the framings of sustainability. Green learning studies are focused on environmental aspects, but research based on place-based learning, architecture education, and heritage backgrounds is more forward-looking, incorporating cultural sustainability, identity, and sense of place as major avenues to sustainable awareness. When the cultural heritage is the central learning medium, spatially-based learning activities contribute not only to cognition but also to emotional attachment as well as behavioral involvement. This review concludes that green learning by spatial experience presents an integrative framework for developing multidimensional sustainability learning in architectural education and recommends the need to explicitly incorporate cultural sustainability in green learning paradigms.