In this paper, we present a method of rectilinear block packing using selected sequence-pair (SSP), a rectangle packing representation. We also propose a fast algorithm to obtain a rectilinear block packing in Oððp þ 1ÞnÞ time keeping all the constraints imposed by a given SSP. Here, p is the number of rectilinear blocks excluding rectangles and n is that of rectangle sub-blocks obtained by partitioning each rectilinear block. So far, the fastest method based on a sequence-pair required Oðn2 þ ‘3 Þ time, where ‘ is the number of rectilinear blocks. If p is constant, the proposed algorithm requires OðnÞ time, which is equal to the trivial lower bound of the time complexity for decoding. The effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed by the experimental comparisons, especially when p is constant. r 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.