Engineered by hand. Built into the wall.
David Falter makes site-specific wall reliefs fabricated and built into the architecture of the place they live. Concept and engineering are the same hand.
From screens to walls.
For ten years David designed for screens. Motion graphics, brand systems, prototypes, work for NASA, Google, Nike, SpaceX, Mercedes-Benz. The output was good, and most of it disappeared within a quarter. New campaign, new website, archive folder.
The work that lasted was the work he made with his hands. A sculpted prototype on the corner of his desk would still be there a year later. The motion piece next to it was gone the day the brief shipped. The thing he wanted to build was the kind of work a place would keep.
He started carving cement. Then drilling it. Then drilling it into walls.
Harvest, at Cleveland's Kovacic Recreation Center in 2022, was the first piece built to be permanent. It won the Best National Mural Award in 2023. The Convergence followed in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2025. Elevated, in Cincinnati's East Walnut Hills, runs ninety-six feet of dimensional PVC along the courtyard wall of Woodburn Exchange.
The making is the work.
Every piece begins in CAD, Fusion 360, Cinema 4D, AutoCAD. The architectural plans get read first. The wall comes before the image. Materials are chosen for the climate, the substrate, the lifespan, and the way light moves across the surface across a year of seasons.
From the digital model, parts are milled on a CNC bed. Cement is mixed in batches and applied directly to brick using an industrial sprayer when the wall calls for it, or hammer-drilled into mortar when the carving is the language. PVC panels three-quarters of an inch thick are cut, sanded, drilled, and mounted on stainless steel three-inch standoffs. Living moss is selected by grade and applied in stages, weighted by where the eye should land.
Documentation is kept at every stage: dimensioned drawings, material specifications, and installation schematics. Available on request for serious enquiries.
Public art that earns its place.
A wall relief is not a mural and not a sculpture. It is part of the building. When it is right, the architecture and the work become one surface. People who walk past it every day stop noticing it as art and start treating it as the place. That is the goal.
The practice takes site-specific commissions for developers, architects, institutions, and municipalities. Work is delivered from concept through installation, with full process documentation. Commissions outside the Greater Cincinnati area are regular. The studio packs into an industrial Sprinter van and brings the work to where the wall is.
Recognition & Clients
The client roster above includes work made under davidfalter.com, a separate digital design practice with its own focus. D_FALT is the public art studio. The two practices share an eye for craft but are kept distinct in scope and intention.