In this paper we develop a new description for subdivision surfaces based on a graph grammar formalism. Subdivision schemes are specified by a context sensitive grammar in which production rules represent topological and geometrical transformations to the surface’s control mesh. This methodology can be used for all known subdivision surface schemes. Moreover, it gives an effective representation that allows simple implementation and is suitable for adaptive computations. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.5 [Computational Geometry and Object Modeling]: Curve, surface, solid, and object representations