Sometimes a good story idea is about being in the right place at the right time. When Taylor Johnson attended the Home Builders Association of Chicago’s Women in Building Forum earlier this year,

we heard panelists and TJ clients Randy Fifield of Fifield Cos. and Elissa Morgante of Morgante Wilson Architects (MWA) discuss the memorable hand-drawn plans MWA provided Fifield in designing the interiors of E2, a luxury apartment community in Evanston, Ill. Team TJ recognized the comment as great fodder for a feature on why some architects and designers still hand sketch in a world where digitized renderings are the norm. A month later, while attending the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference in Las Vegas, we pitched the story in person to the editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Mansion section. We rounded out the idea with examples from other TJ clients, such as Related Midwest and the RAMSA-designed One Bennett Park, as well as KTGY Architecture + Planning. The story appeared on the front cover of Mansion last Friday. Read the full feature here.

Clockwise from left: Related Midwest’s One Bennett Park, sketched by Daniel Lobitz at RAMSA; KTGY Architecture + Planning’s drawing of a California mixed-use community; and a Morgante Wilson Architects’ sketch for E2.