Bern Balfe was educated at University College Dublin. During a year out, she worked in Los Angeles as a toy designer.

After graduating in 1985 with an honours degree in architecture, she worked in London, where she studied for her professional practice qualifications, and met Nigel, a landscape architect with a ruined house in Bermondsey: the remains of the gatehouse to Bermondsey Abbey.

Together they restored it; meanwhile Bern got a job with the in-house architecture department of the BBC where she built up some real expertise in the alteration of old buildings as well as in space planning, office design, acoustics, and project management.

In 1994 she moved to Edinburgh, and worked for RMJM, for whom she travelled to the Middle East to work on a hotel project; did some proposals for refurbishment of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and designed an office building on the Bush Estate near Penicuik.

In 1997 she became an associate at Benjamin Tindall Architects and was Project Architect for the alteration of a Grade A listed building at the top of the Royal Mile to create the headquarters of the Edinburgh International Festival, and for The Queen's Gallery, at the other end of the Royal Mile, both of which were award-winning projects.

In 2001, with 15 years of experience behind her, Bern founded The Architectural Collaborative.