In this paper, a shape-based block layout (SBL) approach is presented to solve the facility layout problem with unequal-area and fixed shapes. The SBL approach employs hybrid genetic algorithm (Hybrid-GA) to find a good solution and the concept of bay structure is used. In the typical facility layout problem with unequal area and fixed shapes, the given geometric constraints of unequal-area and fixed shapes are mostly approximated to original shape by aspect ratio. Thus, the layout results require extensive manual revision to create practical layouts and it produces irregular building shapes and too much unusable spaces. Experimental results show that a SBL model is able to produce better solution and to create more practical layouts than those of existing approaches.