Achieving functional recovery means that buildings can be safely reoccupied in a reasonable amount of time and with minimal repair following a major earthquake. It requires a paradigm shift of building standards and design practice from life-safety-centred to resilience-oriented. This paper presents a critical review of the existing methodologies and frameworks for assessing buildings' seismic resilience and modelling functional recovery. In particular, the insights about how seismic resilience contributes to functional recovery and vice versa were drawn from a comparison of these two concepts. This paper can be helpful in future research to determine the resiliency targets and identify the missing gaps to formulate a framework for functional recovery to be used in the New Zealand engineering and building sector.