Machined flatness is a very recent expectation. It arrived, in Costa Rica, along with a generation of contractors who understood a level wall as evidence of quality. The result is a country full of new residences whose surfaces are technically perfect and atmospherically empty.
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A hand-plastered wall is not uneven. It is troweled, which is different — deliberately worked so that light finds a subtle grain rather than a mirror. The wall receives the sun. The room, in turn, receives the wall.
“A perfectly flat wall reflects a room. A troweled wall composes it.”
