Developers Nightingale have secured seven sites on Duckett Street in conjunction with seven of Melbourne's top architects, who will each build a mid-rise apartment building on the street.

Nightingale Village is set to be completed in 2020, and, like other projects by the developers, the design will be informed by prospective buyers.

Nightingale managing director Jeremy McLeod said the organisation's housing model was designed to create sustainable, livable and affordable housing that gave people the ability to connect with their community.

"The problem that was happening in our cities was property development as speculation, as investment, rather than a city building housing for its residents," Mr McLeod said.

The first project using this model, The Commons in Brunswick, was completed by Mr McLeod's firm, Breathe Architecture, in 2014.

"It was meant to stand alone as a single prototype building which would inspire the property development sector to look at housing for owner-occupiers," Mr McLeod said.

He said once the building started to gain attention in the media, people ??? particularly those under 35 ??? started contacting him to create similar properties.

"I don't think there's resistance from millennials to living in apartments, I just think they've never had the choice before," he said. "They're not seeing this as a stepping stone to a big house in the suburbs, they're saying 'this is my future home'."

Other Melbourne architecture firms came on board wanting to design their own buildings using the Nightingale model.

Nightingale Village will be the fifth project in Melbourne using the model, and the largest to date.

Mr McLeod said Nightingale's prospective buyer waitlist had grown from 11 to over 3700 in the past three years, and 1500 of those buyers said they wanted to live in Brunswick.

There are two other apartment buildings in Duckett Street, so Nightingale village won't have the street to itself, but Mr McLeod said that was the point of the model.

Architect Clare Cousins will design one of the seven buildings. She was looking forward to consulting with possible buyers to come up with the design.

"It guides the direction of the project and it does become community-led," Ms Cousins said.

Nightingale consults prospective buyers about what they want in a home - whether it's a second bathroom, more living space or storage.

Ms Cousins said taking on the project with the other architects and creating a cohesive precinct was exciting.

"We're all great colleagues and friends and what I'm really interested in is how we can bring some of the qualities that we try and bring to single houses into apartment living."

She said some of those things were storage, furniture placement, and how the design of the building's common areas encourages community connection.

Mr McLeod said amenities such as vegetable gardens, cafes, rooftop gardens and rooftop laundries all feature in Nightingale's projects, and are designed to give residents "accidental meeting points".

"If you think about the old village town square where historically people would come together and wash their clothes at the water source - it's that same idea."

He said he would like to get to a point where Nightingale was not necessary and where good-quality, sustainable housing close to amenities was the norm.

"People want to live near where they work," he said. "They don't want to travel for and hour stuck in a car in gridlock - that's not the future that the millennials we're seeing on the Nightingale wait list want to be part of."