John Fleetwood Baker

Plastic Theory - Morrison Shelter

The most spectacular application of Baker’s plastic theory was to the ‘Morrison Shelter’. At the start of the Second World War almost all the standard forms of air raid shelter were unsatisfactory. Baker designed a new type of indoor shelter, the size of a dining table, beneath which a whole family could shelter.

These shelters were designed to squash down plastically by no more than 12 inches if the house collapsed as a result of a bomb.