Dante Oscar Benini, a pupil of Scarpa and Niemeyer, has designed and built all over the world and has collaborated on projects with Frank O. Ghery, Richard Meier, Arup and Daniel Libeskind. He is registered with the Board of Architects of Rome and is member if the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) and the ARB (Architects Registration Board) in Great Britain and of the AIA (American Institute of Architects) in the USA. In 1997 he founded “Dante O. Benini & Partners Architects” which he directs as Lead Partner and Chairman together with Luca Gonzo, Senior Partner and Managing Director. With offices in Milan, London and Istanbul the Studio has several departments in the field of architectural design, urban planning, interior architecture, design and nautical design, with a staff of about 60 people, designing projects for entire urban neighborhoods and offices for large companies, industrial laboratories and shopping centers, as well as exclusive clubs, homes, yachts and designer objects the world over. Each project is conceived on the basis of technical, economic and environmental sustainability and proposes quality Architecture based on the attention to detail. The studio has received a number of awards and special mentions (most recently the Chicago Athenaeum 2011 Good Design Award); it has won and classified in international contests and holds seminars in Italy and abroad. There are numerous publications on the works of the Studio written by the likes of Bruno Zevi, Cesare De Seta, Cesare Casati, Ada Francesca Marcianò, Renato Pedio, Roberto Guiducci, Giampiero Bosoni, Maurizio Vitta, Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi, and others. Helidon Xhixha was born in Durrës, Albania, in December 1970. Born into a family of artists, Xhixha inherited his respect for the Fine Arts and passion for sculpting from his father. While waiting to begin his studies at the Academy of Arts in Tirana, he decided to move to Italy where he attended the Brera Art Academy of Milan. During this time (1998) Xhixha was awarded a scholarship to Kingston University, London where he developed techniques in engraving, sculpting and photography. Graduating from the Brera Academy in February 1999 he quickly became renown in the academic art sphere for his unique style. His creations included works in Murano glass and sculptures in stainless steel using innovative and specialized techniques. Within a few years, steel became the base of all of Xhixha’s sculptures. However, it should be noted that Xhixha thinks of steel as a tool, used to manipulate light, rather than the sole medium of the work; famously describing his practice with the words: ‘I do not sculpt materials; I use materials to sculpt light’ The reflective nature of the work gives it an inherent site-specific dependency - the sculptures utilize their environment to capture and transform the surrounding colors and shapes, giving them a dynamic and energetic quality. The impact of his upbringing in Albania; where at the time the school of sculpture was still heavily influenced by an aesthetic tradition inherited from the Soviet Union, is visible in his practice as an artist. Xhixha embraces the idea of the monument - the works are presented as strong, physical objects - but rejects the rhetoric usually associated with such a style; emphasizing instead the interplay between steel, light and the environment. ‘I was born as a monumental artist and I always considered art with a sense of greatness and vastness as it is the ultimate expression of the human mind and soul. Even when I work on a smaller sculpture I mold in it the concept of immensity’