The growing complexity and size of systems and the organizations that create these systems trigger the need for instruments that facilitate the creation of these systems. We shortly analyze these trends and the (potential) role of reference architectures as facilitating means. After a short discussion about the content of Reference Architectures and their relation with system architectures, system design and actual systems, we zoom in on the question what the appropriate level of detail is for

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... eference Architectures. We discuss an evolutionary approach to create and maintain Reference Architectures