Architectural
Design Rewriting (ADR) is a rule-based approach for the design of
dynamic software architectures. The key features that make ADR a
suitable and expressive framework are the algebraic presentation and
the use of conditional rewrite rules. These features enable, e.g.
hierarchical (top-down, bottom-up or composition-based) design and
inductively-defined reconfiurations. The contribution of this paper is
twofold: we define Hierarchical Design Rewriting (HDR) and present our
prototypical tool support. HDR is a flavour of ADR that exploits the
concept of hierarchical graph to deal with system specifiations
combining both symbolic and interpreted parts. Our prototypical
implementation is based on Maude and its presentation serves several
purposes. First, we show that HDR is not only a well-founded formal
approach but also a tool-supported framework for the design and
analysis of software architectures. Second, our illustration tailored
to a particular algebra of designs and a particular scenario traces a
general methodology for the reuse and exploitation of ADR concepts in
other scenarios.