Educated at the Plymouth School of Architecture and Downing College Cambridge, Dean worked with professors Colquhoun and Miller on the extension to the Royal College of Art, London and gallery and museum projects throughout Europe, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Tate Britain. His education and experience with this practice shaped his attitude to design and spurred an interest in the Poetics of Architecture.
Dean’s work and studies have focused on the relationship between the city and the urban condition. His research draws on a wide range of influences from European Baroque Architecture to the early Modernists. The Cambridge School with its focus on the city has influenced a number of projects, designed and implemented with Smith Caradoc-Hodgkins Architects.
He is responsible for design and implementation with Smith Caradoc- Hodgkins Architects and has managed a wide variety of projects including urban mixed-use, multi-level projects in Leicester Square, China Town and Covent Garden. He has also led a number of masterplanning schemes in London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Brighton.
Dean’s work has been published widely, he has exhibited in London, Berlin, Frankfurt and Cambridge and he is a visiting lecturer and critic at institutions throughout the UK, notably, Cambridge University and the Architectural Association.