BUILD Q4 2026 Architect-Led Design/ Build Practice of the Year 2026 – DMV Region CACAO is a team of architects and builders specialized in additions, renovations, and custom homes. Their practice is rooted in light. We sat down with co-founder and CEO JoseMi Jauregui to talk about the studio, its people, and the light that guides their work. At CACAO, every project begins with the sun. The team starts by studying how light moves across the site and into the house, and that study shapes everything that follows. Light is the first decision, and the most important one. Light decides how a home looks, how it works, and how it feels. Two worlds meet at CACAO. One is craft: a team of craftsmen, architects, and builders who still sketch daily. The other is technology: laser scans that capture a house exactly as it stands, and 3D models that let the team test and plan a design before anything is built. JoseMi sees the two working together, the best tools in service of an old respect: for the art of making, and for the artisans who carry it. JoseMi leads CACAO alongside Joe Harris, cofounder and director of architecture, and Jason Iannotti, director of construction. Between them, the three directors hold over 75 years of experience in the DMV, and their bond with the region runs deep. They have built and transformed homes across Northwest DC, Bethesda, and Northern Virginia. The recipe, as JoseMi puts it, is simple: people, then light. Trust is rooted in a special bond within the team, and JoseMi borrows an analogy from Simon Sinek to explain its power: trapeze artists can push their limits because of the net beneath them. “Trust is that net,” he said. At CACAO, building trust means raising the standard of care, communication, and attention, to each other and to the complexities of every project. “A home is where a family’s day begins and ends. The rituals held there, day after day, quietly shape a life. To work on a home is to work on those rituals, and we hold that as a privilege.” One project that best explains the studio is the Sundial Home, a custom home in Bethesda, Maryland, built on a narrow, sloping, wedge-shaped lot. The team opened the plan toward the south and placed a sunlit courtyard at its centre, so every room looks toward the light as it moves through the day. During one of the design presentations with Joe, the client said something unique and touching: “My home is a sundial.” There is no better description of what CACAO is trying to do, because it came from the person living there: a home rooted in light, in the words of the one who lives in it. Between the first study and the finished house, the work starts with an inspiring concept, followed by a careful process of making it great. The team chooses materials for the light they will meet: a pale wall to carry it deeper, warm wood to hold it. Part of their secret, it seems, is that after decades in the profession, they all think of themselves as students: of light, of craft, and even of building science. JoseMi describes the work as a calling and a dream to practice, one that asks for the whole of them, heart and brain. It is what keeps the studio learning, project after project. The growth is personal, too. “We started as architects and designers,” JoseMi reflected. “Now we are learning to become leaders and entrepreneurs.” Inside the studio, people come first, because with the right people, happy in their work, CACAO does its best work. The founders want the studio to give its team what a good home gives a family: clarity, warmth, and room to grow. Most of CACAO’s work still comes through referrals, one family to the next. For JoseMi, 2026 has been one of the most exciting years in CACAO’s story, and it feels like the studio is just getting started. The north star stays the same: the people they serve. When the work and the feeling come together, he says, the team goes home with a smile, and for CACAO, that is the measure of a home well made. Contact: JoseMi Jauregui Company: CACAO Studio Web Address: https://www.cacao-studio.com/ CACAO’s directors, with family. Standing, from left: JoseMi Jauregui, Joe Harris, and Jason Iannotti.
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