Anish Kapoor Temenos Sculpture

The vaulting cultural ambitions of five modestly sized northern councils were realised today - spectacularly - with the handover of a huge but delicate sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

The gently twisted take on a vast butterfly net is the first of five interlinked giants of Teesside which will lay claim, on completion in the next decade, to being the biggest public artwork in the world.

Commissioned from Kapoor and his engineering collaborator Cecil Balmond, who are also designing London's Olympic tower, the structures will complement earlier landmarks created on an heroic scale by industrialists along the river.

"Look at them," said Kapoor, sweeping his arm over the view from Middlesbrough football club's Riverside stadium. "The transporter bridge, the Middlehaven crane, two great container ships moored here. We have had to think in those sorts of terms."

The first £2.7m sculpture, Temenos, "opens" just a week after Teesside shipped out one of the largest pieces of engineering ever made locally: a seabed pipelaying system for South Korea which is bigger than the Tyne bridge. Middlesbrough's mayor, Ray Mallon, said: "We have our challenges here, but we are lean, mean and fit, and our motto is: 'If you build it, people will come'."

That has proved true for a pioneering drive to improve the grubby legacy ironstone, mining and early chemical works with artworks such as Claes Oldenburg's Bottle of Notes, a jumbo-sized tribute to explorer Captain Cook, that was commissioned by Middlesbrough in 1990.

Its success as a visitor draw emboldened Gateshead - another middle-range council, overshadowed by its bigger neighbour Newcastle-upon-Tyne - to go ahead in 1994 with Antony Gormley's Angel of the North.

Middlesbrough meanwhile went ahead with Mima, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, modelled on San Francisco's SF-Moma and Macba in Barcelona.

"There were people who were cautious or had doubts," said Mallon. "But a town like ours succeeds when people are proud of it, and our arts programme is an expression of that pride.

"Anish and Cecil didn't have to come here, but we're proud that they did. I am sure that in 300 years time, people will talk about them in the way that we talk about Rembrandt nowadays."

Kapoor and Balmond said the structure was on the edge of technology; the net alone involved 64 separate points of longitude and 49 different curves, all of which altered as tension was applied. Wind movement on the tallest, 53-metre pole meant the metal had to be punctured with holes, and other adjustments were "like tuning a large and complicated piano".

Temenos is Greek for a sacred piece of ground - complementing, Kapoor said, the locally worshipped turf of the nearby football club. The net has evoked comparisons with Middlesbrough FC's goalmouths, and suggestions that on special occasions one of the club's stars could try to punt a football through it.

Both Kapoor and Balmond paid tribute to engineers and steel erectors from Balfour Beatty, saying: "Every buckle and clip is a work of art in itself." The firm's regional director, Phil Morgan, said: "It has been a unique challenge. You can't see some of the most important parts, such as the 24-metre piling foundations." Engineers who worked like spiders to attach the mesh high above Middlehaven dock are also long gone.

Teesside's art boom has seen David Mach's Brick Train in Darlington, and sculptures in Hartlepool, Cleveland and Redcar and Stockton-on-Tees. The joint regeneration agency Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU) said more economic development has accompanied the commissions than originally hoped.

Temenos stands in an area formerly known for its use of derelict industrial and dockside sites by sex workers. Richard Buckley, the director of delivery for TVU, said £500m in private and public funding had gone into offices, housing and a college building.

Bob Lane, of the national Homes and Communities Agency, said: "I will go back to my board and tell them that the £39m we have put into the area has been money well spent."

Such endorsements are crucial to raising £12.3m for the next four sculptures which Kapoor and Balmond have started to sketch out in their studios and for which sites have been earmarked.

Alison Clark-Jenkins, the director of the Arts Council in the north-east, said: "Visionary art like this brings together private and public sector partners. The north-east's track record in commissioning has become recognised internationally in the last 20 years."

A related exhibition of items chosen by Kapoor from his own collection, each relating to Temenos, is at Mima until August.