Giant Public Sculptures to Transform Ailing Region

"It began with a pair of tights and two rings. It will become the world's largest public art project: five huge sculptures dotted around a region attempting to rejuvenate itself.

The Tees Valley Giants, unveiled today, are the work of Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and one of the world's leading structural engineers, Cecil Balmond. The pieces will be placed, over the next ten years, in Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington.

The project, more than four years in the planning, was announced today with artist's impressions of the first work, Temenos. The sculpture will fill what is currently a rather bleak landscape between Middlesbrough's Transporter bridge and the Riverside stadium and, appropriately, at 110m will be as long as a football pitch. The 50m-high steel structure consists of a pole, a circular ring and an oval ring, all held together by a kind of cat's cradle of steel wire.

Balmond knows how he wants people to react when they see it. 'It will be a kind of awe, I think. It will be a new landscape.'"