Circular economy has become a strategic blueprint for many countries, circular buildings have also rapidly developed against this backdrop. The purpose of this study is to establish an assessment framework for circular buildings to help stakeholders in the pre-planning stage of the project select circular building design alternatives. Based on the four dimensions of social, economic, environmental, and governance dimensions of sustainable development, circular building assessment criteria are formulated respectively. Following in-depth discussions among expert groups and subsequent decision-making processes, 21 criteria have been defined. The selection of case alternatives was finalized via semi-structured interviews and applied eigenvector of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to calculate the relative weight between criteria. The research findings are intended to provide architectural design teams with the basis for assessing circular building feasibility, pre-planning, and initial design stages when formulating circular design alternatives.