Component Based Software Engineering is an approach for reusing software artifacts when developing applications. In order to develop solutions using this approach, it is necessary to compose software using components that have already been developed. After putting those pieces together, we need to coordinate the interdependencies established among those compositions to fulfill the requirements, needed to resolve a problem. This dissertation proposes a software architecture that separates and structures the concepts of coordination, composition and software components in different architectural layers. Using this approach, we expect that specific modifications in layer constructions have the minimum impact on the others layers. ACCA (Architecture for Coordination and Composition of software Artifacts) must be understood as a conceptual structure that is used to organize component based software development. It also presents a composition framework, the reification process for ACCA and a software development process organized using this approach.