"It (GiraGlob) adds to that and keeps building. If we continue to create new things and enhance the old ones, the city could soon become the hub of art and culture.
"And from here on, it can only be positive."
New Zealand art and design collective Lgop fonder and artist Suza Schiele and concept and design developer Warwick Bell. Photo / Tania Whyte
Each GiraGlob - a sustainable object that creates an engaging social space to meet, share and connect with others - tells a story, Bell said.
Whangārei artist Suza Schiele - Bell's wife - wanted to create a network of art like fungal threads usually seen in mushrooms which inspired the globe shape of the vividly blue bubble.
"We can do a map of GiraGlobs across the world, where they pop up, that is all part of the big art piece."
Whangārei District Council came on board when the idea shaped into a prototype.
The number three prototype of the glob has been sitting at the Old Money Factory for a year.
Bell appreciated the council's support and said without them, the mycelium would not have started.
"They have been very brave and supported a local initiative that will go global. They came on board to be the first council in the world to use the glob."
GiraGlob is an internationally registered design made in New Zealand, the first to pop in Whangārei. Photo / Tania Whyte
For Bell, the project marked the intertwining of commercialism and art.
"GiraGlob in itself is an art. If suppose Vancouver takes up on the project and installs half a dozen GiraGlobs, and can they get their own artist to get a local expression on it. When those campaigns are over, they become useful objects, like the Whangārei one.
"It is not just a one-off connect-with-your-local-artist, but you will also be making a piece of infrastructure at the same time."
Whangārei mayor Sheryl Mai said GiraGlob was an example of the kind of innovative support councils and other parties like Creative Northland and Northland Inc could provide to help local artists and creators.
"We all combined to provide funding, and our parks team found a suitable location for this prototype and had input into the standard of the final product.
"Having strict controls to work within when using public money and a requirement to ensure safety when doing things in a public space means projects that get over our thresholds should be in a very good position when their advocates promote them further to the world.
"All power to the GiraGlob – I love it," Mai said.
The GiraGlob manifesto describes the structure as "a globe, the synonym of a sphere is found in a myriad of forms; from seeds and the swelling of the bellies of expecting mothers, to the planets of our solar system.
"The perfect globe of our full moon drops of rain creating rings on our calm ocean surface, circle, and sphere have inspired us, to make objects of cultural significance and use since the beginning of human life on our blue planet.
"A circle has no beginning and no end. We have been conceived in the globular form of the womb, expanded within, and burst out to life onto yet another globe, our planet. There is a continuum. Earth rotates on its axis orbiting the sun, together with everything and all of us.
"Yes, even us now, sitting tucked in together in the globular shell of GiraGlob 0001, turning the round orange dial in the middle of the circular table, slowly rotating round and round..."
