[1] When her father was appointed to a new job in London, she began attending Kingston School of Architecture from the age of 16.
[2] Two years later she joined the Edinburgh office of Robert Matthew (which later became RMJM), working on projects including Crombie Hall at the University of Aberdeen.
She later set up her own practice and then worked with her husband’s firm, John Richards Associates, and was a tutor at Edinburgh College of Art.
Margaret Richards was a council member of the Scottish Special Housing Association, and a founding trustee and former chairman of the Lothian Building Preservation Trust, and she also served on the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland, the Advisory Committee on Artistic Matters of the Church of Scotland, and the ICOMOS International Committee for Training.
[1] In 2014 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) for her ‘outstanding contribution to architecture’.