Abigale Latham

 Beyond Interior Design

Texas North Plains Chapter

At the Beyond Interior Design office, Abigale Latham is known as “The Fearless Visionary,” but on weekends she becomes “The Brunch Queen.” And her culinary indulgence comes with a heaping side of research: Ebb & Flow, her favorite local brunch spot, serves up design that’s “almost better than the food” — faux-floral ceilings, serpent sconces and dark Kelly green walls — although she also highly recommends the chicken fried steak and salty brew martini.

“Thinking about the color palette now makes me cringe,” she says, “but in a way, I find that the boldness proved a lot about my individuality.”

 Abigale, a junior designer who loves figuring out the technical details of a space and creating 3D models and virtual reality walkthroughs for clients, was hired at Beyond Interior Design in 2018 after receiving a degree from the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. But her passion for design emerged earlier, when, as a girl growing up in an Ohio town so small her high school graduating class comprised just 130 students from eight neighboring towns, she began building homes on The Sims at age seven. Her favorite: a Victorian with a wrap-around porch and a huge kitchen with an island. Abigale also expressed her creativity by painting her bedroom bright purple with cerulean blue and lime green accents. “Thinking about the color palette now makes me cringe,” she says, “but in a way, I find that the boldness proved a lot about my individuality.”

Equally instrumental was a study-abroad program focused on Scandinavian architecture that exposed her to the work of European visionaries, including Alvar Aalto in Finland and Bjarke Ingels in Denmark. A highlight was Saint-Pierre, a concrete church in Firminy, France designed by modernist master Le Corbusier and one of her professors, Jose Oubrerie, which features a punch-out window installation above the altar in a constellation shape that creates dancing light patterns around the interior elevations. “It’s truly an amazing experience,” she says.