Structure as Narrative: The Timeless Echo of a Legendary Chair

In 1973, Afra and Tobia Scarpa designed the Monk chair for Molteni&C. Two solid-wood side frames are braced by a tubular-steel stretcher, while the leather seat-back drapes over two parallel steel tubes and is secured by eight polished stainless-steel rivets. Every joint and stress point is left intentionally exposed, inaugurating Molteni&C’s early credo of “construction as narrative” and giving the piece a quiet, monastic austerity. 

The 2025 Heritage edition preserves this twin-frame structure with its hanging leather, while offering the chair in American walnut, black oak, and coffee oak—finishes calibrated to today’s broader interior colour and material palettes. Alongside a reissue of the original dining chair, a lounge version widens the seat and lowers the stance, easily transitioning from the dining room to the living area to the bedroom, all the while maintaining the chair’s disciplined proportions. 

“A classic should not be mothballed; it must speak in the present,” Scarpa once remarked. The revived Monk eschews a flashy redesign and returns to everyday life with the same precise geometry, tactile honesty and structural clarity that defined its importance from the beginning.