Leonard Sulla Manasseh [commonly known as Leonard Manasseh] was born in Singapore on 21 May 1916. He was from a Sephardi Jewish family originally from Baghdad. He subsequently moved to England and studied at the Architectural Association in London from 1935 to 1940. In 1941 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA).
Following war service as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, he was employed as an assistant architect at Hertfordshire County Council Architects Department (1946-48). He then worked as a senior architect for the Stevenage Development Corporation. Manasseh came to prominence in 1951 with the '51 Bar café he designed for the Festival of Britain. Following his success at the Festival, he left Stevenage and with Ian Baker, a fellow student at the AA, he set to Leonard Manasseh & Partners.
Failing to obtain sufficient commissions, in 1953 he moved to Singapore with a new business partner, James Cubbitt whom he had also met at the AA, planning to establish a practice there. However, for family reasons he was forced to return to Britain and resumed his practice with Ian Baker. Soon after his return they received a major commission to design a new office building for Frenchay Engineering in Kingswood, outside Bristol. The building, which was completed in 1955, was much admired. Manesseh's next important commission was Rutherford School in Paddington, London (1958). The success of this building led to many more commissions, notable among these were the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire (1964), which included a grand formal layout of parkland and building, and a landscape scheme for Wellington Country Park in Berkshire in the 1970s. From 1981 his practice was known as the Leonard Manasseh Partnership and subsequently LMP Architects.
Manasseh taught at the Architectural Association in the 1950s and was its President of the AA in 1964-65. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1976 and a Royal Academician (RA) in 1979. In 1989 he was elected President of the Royal West of England Academy, a position he held until 1995.
Manasseh was also a painter, but exhibited very little. He died on 21 May 2017.
See: UK Modern House [link below] for details of work by Leonard Manasseh and Leonard Manasseh & Parners
Brittain-Catlin. Timothy. Leonard Manasseh & Partners. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010 [ISBN: 9781859463680]
Contemporary Designers, edited by Sara Prendergast. Detroit, Michigan: St. James Press, 3rd edition, 1997
Harwood, Elain. Mid-Century Britain: Modern Architecture 1938-1963. London: Batsford, 2021