Design activities, including control design, are becoming increasingly difficult due to a corresponding increase in product and product development complexity. Model-based (or driven) engineering, development and design have become common concepts related to modern complex product development practices. However, it is argued here that currently such approaches only remain successful within a domain-specific context. This work has as main contributions the analysis of desirable characteristics and a proposal for a model which can effectively support model-based development in general (i.e., not only within specific domains), coined here as “architecture-centric”. Another contribution of this work is an intensive review (though hardly complete) on existing tools and methods related to the model-based development of control architectures for complex mechatronic systems. Synthesis, analysis, and verification of the proposals are based on the generic case of control (architecture) design, which represents most of the relevant characteristics and problems in current design practices for complex mechatronic products. Besides the main contributions above, the case studies for control architecture generation provide an overview of the control design process, as well as additional insight into the required characteristics of the model and possible methods to effectively implement it and use it in the context of industrial product development.