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The growing interest in adaptive software systems has resulted in a number of different proposals for the design of adaptive systems. Some approaches adopt architectural models, whereas others model adaptation options, at the level of requirements. This dichotomy has motivated us to perform a comparative study between two proposals for the design of adaptive systems: the Rainbow Framework (architecture-based) and our own proposal, Zanshin (requirements-based). This evaluation paper reports on our methodology and results. It also provides a comparison between the use of architectural and requirements models as centrepieces of adaptation, offering guidelines for the future research in the field of adaptive systems.