In a culture that was credited with the invention of paper in the 1st century, Chinese paper art have existed since that time with products ranging from paper fans, lanterns to decorative designs and structures accomplished by folding, rolling and cutting. The thesis is about the inception and design of a museum dedicated to the paper art in China as well as its counterparts in the rest of the world. To be located in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, the museum will curate its exhibitions primarily on local traditional folk arts using paper. It will be a museum with a comprehensive mission of displaying, preserving, education and research on paper arts. / Master of Architecture

[pt] O presente trabalho tem por objetivo estudar o comportamento crítico e pós-crítico de placas dobradas. Placas dobradas, tanto de aço quanto de concreto, têm sido usadas com grande freqüência em obras de engenharia, particularmente como paredes portantes e coberturas de grandes vãos. Neste último caso, placas dobradas têm uma aplicação semelhante a de cascas esbeltas, sendo, porém, mais simples de construir, dado que são compostas de superfícies planas. Neste trabalho utiliza-se o software ABAQUS para análise de placas dobradas compostas de duas placas formando um dado ângulo entre si. Estuda-se o uso destas placas como paredes portantes sob compressão, sendo conduzido um estudo paramétrico para determinar a influência dos diversos parâmetros geométricos e condições de contorno nas cargas críticas e modos críticos da placa dobrada. A seguir são determinados os caminhos pós-críticos e estuda-se a influência dos diversos parâmetros na rigidez pós-crítica e sensibilidade a imperfeições. Finalmente, estuda-se o comportamento não-linear destas placas sob flexão, sendo investigados os fenômenos de perda de estabilidade associados a este problema. / [en] The aim of the present work is to study the buckling and post-buckling behavior of folded plates. Folded plates, made of steel or concrete, have been widely used in engineering construction as load-bearing walls designed to carry floor and roof loads or roofs for large spaces. In the last case, folded plates work as a thin shell, being however easier to build since they are formed by flat surfaces joined along the fold lines. In this work the software ABAQUS is used to study the behavior of V-shaped folded plates. Initially it is analyzed the behavior of these plates when used as load-bearing walls under axial compression. A detailed parametric analysis is conducted to identify the influence of the geometrical parameters and boundary conditions on critical loads and modes. The influence of these parameters on the post-buckling response, post-critical stiffness and imperfection sensitivity is also investigated. Finally, the non-linear response of V-shaped folded plates under flexure is investigated and the possible instabilities under these loading conditions are analyzed.