The realization of software projects can be significantly eased by extending the focus of reuse to architectural aspects instead of concentrating on separate software elements. Yet in any case, operational techniques are required to support the retrieval and selection of reusable items. To this end, we extend on the concept of design spaces which allows to describe the relevant properties of software elements in a semi-formal way. Moreover, we show how the concept of extended design spaces can be deployed in tools supporting component- and framework-based software development.