He was born in Sandnes and received his architectural education at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1937.
His architecture developed from classical modernism to a form of critical regionalism, using local building motifs and symbols.
He made all the interiors for Christian Haaland's new freight liner's, the «Concordia Line».
Sandved also participated actively in the public sphere, defending the composer Fartein Valen and his atonal polyphonic music in the local newspapers.
In the 1990s the painter Odd Nerdrum discovered that David Sandved was his biological father.