Dos Pueblos
Design ~ Build
Dos Pueblos
Design Build unites architecture and construction to create homes deeply connected to the Gaviota Coast.
LET’S GET STARTED
About Us
Dos Pueblos Design Build is a construction and design-build practice in Southern California. We build timeless, modern homes that belong to this place: informed by its natural light, its native materials, and its iconic landscapes.
Working alongside our design partners at founder Rob’s Michel Architects, our team brings years of combined sensitivity and experience—with projects featured by Architectural Digest and Dwell, and awards from AIA | LA and Docomomo.
We consciously shape spaces around and in conversation with the land, creating an organic symbiosis between natural and built design. We work with locally-sourced materials that are sustainable, durable, and attuned to the light and the land that surrounds.
We believe the best work is built when people who design a house should be accountable for how it's made. By carrying a project from first sketch through turnkey execution, we hold construction to the same rigorous standards that guide the design. Nothing gets lost in translation between the drawing and the wall.
We approach every project as a true collaboration—with clients, consultants, and the craftsmen who bring the work to life. That means clear communication, honest timelines, and a deep knowledge of and respect for each site. The result is homes that feel inevitable in their setting: precise but warm, refined but unpretentious, and built to endure what nature might throw at them.
For us, this work is personal. Our roots in this coast run deep, and we strive to protect its ecological integrity and natural beauty for our families’ future generations.
Rob Michel
Founder | Partner (CSLB Lic. 1148217) // (CAB Lic. C-37961)
Rob Michel is a licensed general contractor and architect. Through his design practice Michel Architects, his work has received the 2026 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Los Angeles Residential Architecture Award and the 2026 Docomomo Modernism in America Award, was featured in the 2026 Architectural Digest Los Angeles issue, and appeared on the cover of AD Germany in March 2026. This dual expertise anchors a design-build approach in which construction is guided by the same intentionality, material sensibility, and attention to detail that shape his architecture—ensuring a project's vision carries through from first drawing to finished home.
Rob’s work is driven by his reverence for the organic Southern California landscape; his family has been deeply rooted in the Hollister Ranch for decades, and he sits on the board of his late uncle and longtime Ranch resident Jay McCafferty’s artist estate.
Jose Aguiniga
Jose Aguinigas has worked in the trades since he was a teen. He grew up tagging along to job sites with his dad, leading him to a career that is now central to his identity and purpose. That conviction took hold on his first residential remodel when, standing in a space he had helped transform, he understood that building is more than the sum of materials and finishes—it is creating a place for life to happen, for family connection and sense of security and hard-earned rest.
Raised by parents whose hard work made his career possible, Jose brings that same ethic of honesty, integrity, and respect to every project he leads. He and his longtime team—including his father and brother—pair years of hands-on experience across the trades with a genuine commitment to understanding both a project's specifications and unique needs, and also what the finished space means for the people who will live in it.
Founder | Partner
Dos Pueblos takes its name from the coast it serves—the canyon that opens onto the Gaviota shoreline, named for the two Chumash villages that once sat here side by side, and whose people have long since stewarded this land with love.
Our families also have history of cohabitating here. Jose’s family–his mother, father, and brother—have lived and worked across this land for decades, building and tending its homes and gardens. Rob’s family–his aunt and uncle—have been on the Hollister Ranch since the 80’s; he married his wife on their parcel. Over the years, we’ve watched that generation of our families come together: through work, then friendship, and today as chosen family.
Now, working closely alongside them, we look together towards our shared future of life on this land, and take responsibility for the way we approach working on it—for generations of our families to come.
Rob’s family’s Hollister Ranch home under initial construction, 1987.