Monk Armchair Revisited
Molteni&C partners with Cabana magazine to create a special edition of the 1973 Monk armchair, Its restrained lines imbued with a richer decorative language.
First designed in 1973 by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, the Monk armchair has long been a study in restraint. Low, quiet and architectural, it reduces the idea of a chair to a few essential gestures, inviting the body into a grounded, almost contemplative posture. For 2025, Molteni&C has returned to this archetype for its Heritage Collection, inviting Cabana magazine to create a special edition that opens the piece up to a richer decorative language.
The collaboration brings two distinct worlds into conversation. On one side is the Scarpas’ formal rigour, expressed through a solid American walnut frame formed from two equal trestles, held in tension by shaped metal tubing. The structure reads as a small piece of architecture: legs, span and a single suspended element that becomes both seat and back. Large, burnished-steel hubs articulate the junctions, turning the hardware into a deliberate detail rather than something to conceal. The proportions remain deliberately modest, keeping the sitter close to the ground and emphasising a sense of pause and inward focus.
Resting within this frame, the seat is formed from natural hide leather, cut and shaped so that it cradles the sitter with a surprising softness. The backrest carries Cabana’s intervention. Drawing on the 20th-century masters of Viennese cane and tubular steel, the Cabana team developed a laser-engraved motif that recalls woven cane, revealing a vivid red panel beneath. The effect is subtle yet striking; from some angles, the chair remains almost monastic; from others, the pattern and colour come forward, catching light and gently animating the surface. This interplay between quiet structure and expressive detail allows the armchair to shift character depending on its surroundings, moving easily between more restrained interiors and layered, collected spaces.
From November 2025, the Molteni&C x Cabana Monk armchair will be presented at Palazzo Molteni in Milan and at flagship stores in New York and London, with a limited number available globally through Molteni&C’s directly operated stores and Cabana’s channels. More than a simple reissue, the piece demonstrates how a clear, well-resolved design can accommodate new readings over time, holding its original spirit while welcoming another voice into the conversation. In this iteration, the Scarpas’ disciplined architecture of timber, metal and hide becomes a canvas for Cabana’s sensitivity to pattern, colour and craft, reaffirming the Monk armchair as a living classic within contemporary interiors.
