This work presents a stratification approach for modeling two-dimensional cell complexes. It introduces the concept of combinatorial stratification and uses the Handlebody theory for cell complexes so as to propose a new representation called Handle-Cell (HC-Rep). This representation deals not only with objects with different dimensionality but also with non-manifolds models. The HC-Rep scheme includes a data structure and a complete set of operators. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.