State of the art understanding of the seismic behaviour of shallow foundations has advanced rapidly in recent years, yet current design practice does not account for these advances. The idea that shallow foundation bearing failure should not occur during an earthquake is not in line with other areas of earthquake engineering, where performance based design is widely accepted. The macro-element investigated in this study is a simple tool that can model complex dynamic soil-structure interaction beneath a shallow foundation. A detailed account of macro-element theory and behaviour is...