The story of a successful encounter continues. One year after the launch of the original Malvasia chair, S-CAB and Francesca Lanzavecchia deepen their partnership with a new project: Malvasia Riviera.
Sometimes, all it takes is a single encounter, a moment, to mark the beginning of something special. This is how Malvasia came to be, the first chair designed by Francesca Lanzavecchia, establishing her collaboration with S-CAB in 2024. A partnership that, this year, was renewed and strengthened with the launch of a new project: Malvasia Riviera.
Luisa Battaglia, Art Director and co-owner of S-CAB (alongside her sister Francesca), recounts its debut: ‘I met Francesca Lanzavecchia in 2023. I had asked her to design an outdoor seat that, with elegance and style, could find a place in the daily life of the contract world. In her, I immediately recognised the right designer: someone able to capture the soul of S-CAB with a soft, refined touch – at times almost caressing. Her style struck me, of course, but even more so did the ease with which she connected with us, her ability to listen, her open dialogue, and her generosity in sharing ideas and paths. That’s how Malvasia came to be, in 2024. And today, in 2025, Malvasia Riviera.’
Cocooning Comfort, Timeless Appeal
An outdoor accent chair with a soft, enveloping embrace. “In Malvasia Riviera, the warmth of the woven rope and the rounded shape of the backrest highlight the cocooning effect of the seat. It blends clean lines with soft textiles and timeless appeal.
A natural evolution of the Malvasia chair, Malvasia Riviera is an outdoor accent chair created for S-CAB, designed to embody an idea of socialising, softness and comfort. Unlike its predecessor, which featured a precise metal weave, Malvasia Riviera presents a backrest in woven rope, giving it a warmer, more natural appearance. The rope weave evokes the gentle textures of fabric, gracefully enveloping the curved tubular frame, which reinterprets the chair’s classic forms in a perfect balance of clean lines and contemporary style.
The frame is enhanced by generously proportioned armrests and a padded seat, ensuring immediate comfort. The use of tone-on-tone melange ropes offers a variety of colour combinations, while the refined weave pattern evokes the pleasant sensation of a breeze gently softening the summer heat. Designed to bring elegance to open-air living – dehors, gardens, terraces and seafront squares – Malvasia Riviera is an invitation to relax in its broad and welcoming embrace, accompanying moments of pure leisure.” Francesca Lanzavecchia
The Original: A Study in Light and Shadow
Simple, minimalist, perforated. Malvasia is the outdoor seat that projects graceful and rigorous weaves of light and shadow through its metal patterns, like the foliage of a tree or the texture of a fabric.
Francesca Lanzavecchia said: ‘Malvasia is designed to become the daily seat of the bar downstairs, the ideal furnishing for outdoor areas, gardens, open spaces, and terraces overlooking the sea, where one can admire the sunset while sipping wine, kissed by the Mediterranean breeze. This outdoor chair designed for S-CAB, despite its simple and organic shapes, poses a production challenge: to extract backrest and seat from a single perforated and calendered piece, to then almost invisibly weld them to the tubular frame.
A complex treatment that softens the impenetrable coldness of metal, bringing it close to its flexibility limit. Malvasia is therefore an object that lives outdoors, projecting around itself a rigorous embroidery of lights and shadows that evokes the warp and weft of a fabric and, at the same time, the foliage of a tree. The legs, characterized by a double curve, give poetic lightness to the furnishing, whose minimal profile is completed by the addition of armrests and soft cushions.’