Manuel Sanchez Arcas was born in Madrid in 1897 and graduated from the School of Architecture in Madrid in 1921.

He later took further studies in London. Back in Spain, he worked with Secundino Zuazo. As of 1925, he started to produce his own projects. He was part of the Technical Office at the University Complex in Madrid, where he worked on building the Government Pavilion, the Power Plant and the Hospital. Over this time, Eduardo Torroja was one of his closest collaborators.

They jointly founded the magazine 'Hormigon y Acero' and in 1934 the Technical Institute of Construction and Building. He went into exile in Russia and Poland after the Civil War. He later moved to Berlin, where he died in 1970.