Accelerating innovation in civil engineering and building design with the development of Archi-TRIZ and QFD

Abstract

Firstly, there is a demand for the introduction of new specialized methodologies to foster innovation in the field of civil engineering. Following a literature review, it was found that TRIZ is a systematic methodology for innovative design, but its direct application in the building design process is challenging. Therefore, it was deemed relevant to produce a customized contradiction matrix, later called Archi-TRIZ, to accelerate innovation in the building design process. Secondly, this thesis describes the development of the Archi-TRIZ contradiction matrix in order to accelerate innovation in the design of non-structural components of buildings. Its utility was then experimented in the design of a movable wall project. Moreover, Archi-TRIZ could also prove beneficial in other areas of civil engineering. Subsequently, the idea of creating a website or mobile application integrating Archi-TRIZ to facilitate its use by designers was presented and discussed, and this idea was illustrated using figures, tables, and descriptions. Thirdly, to accelerate innovation in building design, the thesis methodology was enhanced by incorporating relevant article concepts, innovative designs, and creative approaches that could be useful in various civil engineering and architectural design projects. Descriptions were added, and the content was logically connected to each of the 40 inventive principles of the Archi-TRIZ methodology, leading to the creation of several synthesis tables. Then, examples from these tables — each linked to a specific inventive principle — were proposed to be integrated into a website or mobile application to make them more accessible, as mentioned earlier, with the aim of accelerating innovation in building design by facilitating the brainstorming process for designers and civil engineers. Fourthly, in order to help designers, choose the best options derived from Archi-TRIZ, the QFD decision-making method was introduced and used, while also adding more features to the product by better taking customer needs into account. To do this, customer needs were considered through the QFD method, which was applied after the use of Archi-TRIZ. Using the movable wall example, the process first aimed to select the better option between two alternatives, then to add additional features based on customer expectations. Each choice regarding each feature of the movable wall was ranked and selected based on user needs. In summary, the methodology was applied twice in the movable wall example to experiment the usefulness of the method proposed in this thesis. Finally, for future work, it is recommended to create different specialized contradiction matrices for various fields of civil engineering, which could be called Hydro-TRIZ, Road TRIZ, Structure-TRIZ, Renewable-Energy-TRIZ, etc. It is also suggested to add specific innovative examples for each field and include all these elements as additional features in the mobile application or website introduced in this thesis, with the aim of accelerating innovation across the different sectors of civil engineering.

Date	5 Dec 2025
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor)