A YOUNG, enthusiastic and dynamic firm of architects is going for gold after being shortlisted for the Tomorrow’s Townhouse Competition.

Design ACB, which submitted The Stack House, is in the top five after beating off competition from some of the country’s leading architectural practices in the competition that is part of the British Home Awards, sponsored by the Daily Telegraph, Futureform and British Gas.

Set up in 2005 by Dominic Gaunt, Matthew Chamberlain and David Ayre, the trio at Design ACB, based in Wolverton Court, London Street, Basingstoke, have high hopes and if their design wins, the entry will be built as a prototype and displayed at the Ideal Home Show next year.

Dominic said The Stack House design follows the long and narrow form associated with a traditional townhouse.

Steel-framed modules stack at the front and back with a stair core and lightwell in the middle, creating split-level sections with varying room heights.

The house has been designed to use green technology, making use of a new type of turbine that sits on the ridge of the roof, solar panels and energy-efficient air-source heat pumps provide most of the heating and hot water.

Dominic said: “We have planned for the whole house to be supplied with green electricity – produced from sources which do not cause negative impacts upon the environment, and so increase the sustainability credentials of the house.”

“The idea of the house is that it is entirely adaptable, so it can be built anywhere around the country, where you can change the façade materials to suit that environment.”

David said: “We had a lot of discussion internally about town centre living and family housing.

“What we’re looking at here is a family house that can be really flexible in terms of the number of storeys it has and in terms of room layout.

“And you can really see families living in a house like this and in fact we’ve had a number of people say, ‘yeah, I’d like to live in one of those’.”

“We have seen a number of developers and housing associations very interested in this design and it would be nice to develop it and see it built – that is our dream."