At Edinburgh, Dean studied under the late-modernist Professor Isi Metzstein, building conservation engineer and writer Ted Ruddock and design critic Mike Duriez.
[3] After finishing his academic studies, Dean received funding from the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to document mud adobe structures in New Mexico and Arizona.
At Griffiths', he provided heritage assistance in obtaining planning consent for RHWL architects' post-modern influenced extension to St Pancras Chambers.
[7] Dean has written and illustrated two books on the 19th-century British architect Sir John Soane, and co-written a study of London's historic Borough Market.
These are done in a wobbly line pen and ink technique with evocative colour washes, broadly influenced by the English tradition typified by Samuel Palmer.