After the helter-skelters and a crack in the floor of the last two years, both causing unintentional injuries, the latest art commission for Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall is an installation to suggest a city under attack.

Bunk beds have been installed in a “shelter environment” to portray a people sheltering from an imagined enemy or disaster.

Months of speculation were brought to a close today after Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, 43, one of France’s leading artists, unveiled her work for the Tate’s prestigious Unilever Series commission - a commission worth £400,000 to each artist.

“TH.2058” involves 200 metal bunk beds laid out in rows, each with a book on a relevant theme - from H G Wells’s War of the Worlds, the first modern tale of alien invasion, to J G Ballard’s The Drowned World, in which London is transformed into a primeval swamp.

The installation, the Tate said, is set 50 years from now and is inspired by both real and fictional scenarios of London under attack whether by flooding, bombing or invasion.

The artist has imagined the city’s population taking shelter in the Turbine Hall from never-ending rain - conveyed through the accompanying sound of dripping water - which has caused copies of giant animal sculptures by other artists (Alexander Calder’s flamingo and Louise Bourgeois’s spider) to mutate and grow 25 per cent in size from the original.

Vicente Todoli, the director of Tate Modern, described it as “a highly evocative installation” that symbolises an apocalyptic vision of London in the future. His curator, Jessica Morgan, called it “beautiful”, insisting that the artist had spent a lot of time thinking about it, and that her influences included Henry Moore’s iconic shelter drawings.

Members of the public took a different view. “What a load of rubbish,” said Nathan Wilson, a physiotherapist from London. “What am I doing working for a living?” joked Brian Rice, an accountant.

Nor was Ewan Fergusson, a retired diplomat, any more impressed. “I would rather look at Henry Moore’s shelter drawings,” he said. His wife, Sara, mocked the “slightly tiresome notice” that explained the work to bemused visitors.

Further condemnation was voiced by the art critic Judith Bumpus: “It’s such a muddle, it’s difficult to take in as art.”

Georgina Adam, editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper, said: “It’s an environment - not art.” Another critic, however, saw deep meaning in it.

Gonzalez-Foerster, 43, has made her name using light and sound to create “environments”. In Promenade (2007), she simulated the sound of a tropical rainstorm. In Séance de Shadow II (bleu), seen at Tate Modern last year, the movement of visitors triggered lights that cast shadows on to a wall.

“TH.2058” is her first public commission in the UK. She said that the global economic meltdown gave the work added resonance although it is not a pessimistic work: “It has a dark side but if you spend more time in it I hope that you get the feeling that it’s not only dark.”

She added: “We are in (a period of) intense turbulence - fasten your seatbelts.”

She is the second French-born artist commissioned for the Unilever Series after Bourgeois launched the project in 2000. This is the ninth work in the series.

She is following in the footsteps of the Colombian Doris Salcedo, who created a 167-metre crack that stretched the length of the floor of Tate Modern, and the Belgian-born artist Carsten Holler who came up with fairground helter skelters.

While three visitors to Salcedo’s crack were slightly injured - staff were handing out leaflets warning the public of the dangers of getting too close to it - Tate Modern also faced a claim for compensation from one person who was injured on Holler’s 180ft-long helter-skelter.

Other Unilever commissions have included Rachel Whiteread, who stacked 14,000 white, polythene boxes into piles, and Olafur Eliasson, who invited the public to lay back and stare into the ethereal glow emanating from his recreated sunrise.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of 2008
• Hitler and the Downfall mash-ups
• Britney Spears: The Circus