Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1907, Oscar Niemeyer remains one of the most important names in international modern architecture. Both hailed and criticized as a “sculptor of monuments," his designs infuse his chosen material – reinforced concrete – with exuberant liquidity. The result? Vibrant forms featuring sensual curves that can’t help but elicit a response.

Birthday celebrations and exhibitions in honor of Niemeyer's upcoming centenary have been taking place all over the world. His new People's Theatre in Niterói, Brazil was inaugurated recently, and a retrospective exhibition of Niemeyer's last ten years, Oscar Niemeyer 10/100, went on show earlier this year at Rio de Janeiro’s Paco Imperial. In Canada, the University of Montréal screened the film, Oscar Niemeyer, un architecte engagé dans le siècle (an architect engaged in the century) early in December to mark the occasion.

Niemeyer studied as an engineer and architect at the Escola de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. He started his career in 1935, working free-of-charge for Rio architects Lúcio Costa and Carlos Leão. Soon after, the studio was commissioned by Education Minister Gustavo Capanema to design the new headquarters for the Ministry of Education and Public Health in Rio de Janeiro.

Working with this team was a golden opportunity for the young Niemeyer. In addition to his employers, it included fellow modernist architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy, architect, painter and “muralista” Ernâni Vasconcellos and Swiss architect and writer Le Corbusier, who acted as a consultant. The building, which featured local materials, Corbusian brise-soleil sun shades and bold colours, marked the government’s official adoption of modern architecture. Completed in 1943 and renamed Palácio Gustavo Capanema in 1985, it is considered to be one of the first modernist skyscrapers in the world.

In 1940, Niemeyer – only 33 years old – was commissioned by Minas Gerais, the mayor of Brazilian town Belo Horizonte, to develop a series of buildings to be called the “Pampulha Complex.” Niemeyer’s Pampulha Church of São Francisco de Assis, whose curved blue-and-white façade resembles the trajectory of a bouncing ball, was controversial from the start. Thanks to its unorthodox form, the church authorities refused to consecrate the building until over a decade later. (They also took exception to the Candido Portinari mural portraying Saint Francis of Assisi saving the ill, poor and - gasp – the sinner).

The finished complex also featured a casino, dance hall, restaurant, yacht club, golf club and the Mayor’s weekend retreat, all sprinkled around an artificial lake. The project – and Niemeyer himself – gained international exposure after bring featured in a 1943 exhibit titled Brazil Builds at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Niemeyer built his reputation as modernist-with-curves through a number of projects, most notably the United Nations Headquarters in New York – on which he collaborated with Le Corbusier. Of the four-building landmark complex, the 39-storey Secretariat was the largest, becoming a worldwide symbol of the UN. The Secretariat's distinctive green glass curtain was among the first of its kind in the city. It brought international recognition to Niemeyer’s innovative style, and linked him with the emergence of modern architecture as a dominant force worldwide.

At this time, Niemeyer also built a house for himself in Rio de Janeiro. Titled the House at Canoas, it featured rounded walls, a rhythmic glass façade, and an effort to integrate Niemeyer’s classic concrete style with the natural surroundings. Dubbed the architect’s domestic masterpiece, the residence is currently open to the public for tours, exhibitions on Niemeyer’s works, courses and seminars.

All this was the prelude to the architect's most famous work: Brasilia, Brazil's ambitious new capital city. This began in 1956, when then-Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek asked Niemeyer to help him build Brasilia. A unique commission, Kubitschek’s scheme envisioned creating an entire city from scratch in the middle of the country, miles away from any other major city. The goal was to stimulate national industry, while also connecting and populating Brazil’s outlying areas.

While Niemeyer himself would design the buildings for Brasilia, he held a competition for the city’s layout. The commission went to his old employer, Lúcio Costa, whose scheme included the Supreme Court, Congress and the President’s Palace laid side by side on one axis (as a reminder of the balance of the three powers). A residential district dominated another axis. Costa also envisioned “superquadras” (superblocks) for commerce and business, and streets with no names, only numbers and letters.

Within a short span of months, Niemeyer had designed the Palácio da Alvorada (the president’s house), the National Congress, the Cathedral of Brasilia (built with 16 identical concrete columns, intended to represent two hands reaching to heaven) and many more. In fact, Brasilia was designed, built, and inaugurated in under four years. It was Niemeyer and Costa’s blank canvas – a place to try out innovative new concepts of city planning, such as streets without transit and buildings raised above the ground on columns, allowing for empty, usable space below.

Although many of Brasilia's architectural concepts were ignored or changed by later presidents, the city’s original ideology was rooted in socialism: the government owned all the residences. Apart from the president’s exceptional status, enshrined in his palace, there was no “elite” class, meaning that a common laborer would be in the same apartment building as the city’s top minister.

In 1964, Niemeyer went to Israel to work on the University of Haifa’s campus. He returned home to a dictatorship that would run the country for over two decades (Kubitschek's successor João Goulart was overthrown in a military coup d’etat, and General Castello Branco gained control of Brazil). Niemeyer had joined the Brazilian Communist Party in 1945; after the coup, his public left-wing position became increasingly problematic for his career. Brazilan commissions dried up, so Niemeyer moved to Paris, opening an office on the Champs Élysées. His projects there included the headquarters for the French Communist Party in Paris and the Mondadori publishing company in Italy, as well as the Penang State Mosque in George Town, Malaysia.

When democracy returned to Brazil, so did Niemeyer, and it was in 1991, when he was 84 years old, that he created what is arguably his greatest work: the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Niterói. A 16-metre-tall saucer-shaped building, it features a cupola with an expansive diameter of 50 metres. The UFO-like structure hovers over “Boa Viagem” (Bon voyage), an 817-square-metre reflecting pool that surrounds the museum’s base.

Niemeyer still goes in to work every day. His more recent works include the Oscar Niemeyer Museum complex in Curitiba, Brazil, known to locals as "Niemeyer's Eye” for its eye-shaped structure, and the Auditório Ibirapuera concert hall in São Paulo (shown).

Although designed by the architect half a century ago, the Auditório was built and inaugurated only last year (the plans – originally cancelled due to financial and political problems – were revisited in 2002). The red-and-white wedge-shaped building’s strange timeline reflects the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have characterized Niemeyer’s career. Appropriately, it's a seemingly-simple concrete structure that has been sculpted into a fluid, ever-reaching work. While firmly anchored – both on the ground and in the past, the building, like Niemeyer's continuing relevance, seems quite literally to float into the future. – Paige Magarrey