Margaret (Peggy) Ann Cochrane graduated with a B.A. Degree from Scripps College in Claremont, CA. There she majored in architecture, assisted in teaching and won the architecture prize her senior year. She did graduate work in architecture at the University of Southern California and in Columbia University in New York, and studied Architecture and City Planning in Europe (1954). Cochrane had over thirty years of varied experience in all types of construction: office buildings, schools, hospitals, factories, apartment houses, condominiums, housing tracts, custom residential and remodeling.

Some selected firms she has worked for include Kahn and Jacobs (New York, NY); Litchfield, Whiting, Panero, and Severud (Tehran, Iran); Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall (Los Angeles, CA); and the Department of Public Buildings City of Los Angeles. She operated her own practice from March 1959-June 1963 and from February 1978 to the end of her career.

Cochrane died in 2012.