The design of an object-oriented framework for the blockstructured Berger-Oliger AMR-method 
is presented. It simplifies the definition of concrete applications and allows a natural 
formulation of the parallel AMR-algorithm. A distribution strategy especially tailored
for AMR is described. Gas dynamical computations of instabilities of the Kelvin-Helmholtz type in 
two and three space dimensions are employed to demonstrate the efficiency of the approach.