Your World from Here

There is something that accompanies your every step, supports your every choice, and adapts to your path without asking for anything in return. You often take it for granted, but it has always been there, making things happen, at the beginning of your heights. This is the point of view of the foundations, which transform according to each of our desires and needs, without ever letting us lose our balance. Looking towards the future, with our feet firmly on the ground.

I Don’t Complain

I was born to be stepped on. It happens constantly, day and night, everywhere.
But I am strong, oh yes, I am. I feel no pain, and I don’t argue. Being what I am and doing what I do makes me proud, even if I am somewhat underestimated: I was made to be a path, a road, a space to inhabit, to stop, and to wait.
Those who pay attention to me do so because, perhaps lost in thought, they don’t quite know where to rest their gaze. They stare at me, hoping to find, in my veins, an answer to their questions, a spark.

That’s fine with me. What is there to complain about when you support steps, dreams, and time?
I am the floor that responds, that speaks with you. And we are already doing it.

With a Soul of My Own

There is no place where I am not present. Maybe among the stars, there I do not exist. Nor in your dreams, when you feel like you are floating or experience that sense of vertigo, teetering between a step and the void.
But otherwise, I am always there: I am where things happen, the meeting point between you and the world. I don’t say this to boast, but I am essential, concretely so.
My foundations are also a little bit yours, and vice versa.

People appreciate my stability and security. After all, am I not steady? I am expected to be straightforward, solid, easy to maintain, and just welcoming enough.
You might be surprised to hear that, over time, I have learned to change. Yes, even I change, along with the needs of those who live on me and design me.
For years, I was rigid and unchanging. Steady—by nature—but set in place once and for all. My names carried a certain weight for me too: concrete, marble, paving. You know that heavy sensation? My fate was always the same, year after year: to support. Preferably in silence—because if I creak, that’s trouble, it makes people worry.
Then I discovered that I could be more, more than immobile, and have a soul of my own.
My name became lighter: cork, nature, sustainability. Today, I am called raised floor, and I am no longer just a surface but a system, an architecture within architecture of multiple levels, of invisible spaces, of possibilities.
Beneath me lies everything needed to make reality function without revealing its mechanisms: air, roots, connections, energy.
I am the floor that welcomes, that hides, that warms you.

I Free You, I Protect You, I Offer You a Flower

I can be dismantled, reassembled, moved, and flexed. I inhabit one place today and another tomorrow, leaving no trace of myself, without waste. I am strong, but I am not definitive. Yet, I still guarantee stability and security.
And as you move above me, I create the necessary space for you to advance and evolve without obstacles or dangers. I free you from stumbling, I conceal what does not need to be seen. Discreet, hospitable, intimate. I protect your journey.
And every now and then, a sprout emerges from me, a plant grows, and I offer you flowers.
I am the floor that knows its place, to improve (and beautify) yours.

A promise is a promise

I don’t ask for attention. Or maybe I do. After all, if you are reading this, I have succeeded a little.
I have taken the chance to lift my head just a little and let you know that I am here, and I always will be. Renewed, improved, looking towards the future, with your feet firmly on me.
So that the spaces you inhabit may be free, accessible, adaptable, and well-balanced.
I am here, even tomorrow. Under your steps, always.

Texts by Chiara Foffano – Illustrations by Ariele Pirona