Baldur's Gate 3 maker Larian wants to turn the empty office at 1 Farnham Road into a 4,346 sq m studio for over 220 staff. Comments close Saturday 29 August; decision due 24 September.
Larian Studios, the company behind Baldur’s Gate 3, has applied to turn the empty office block at 1 Farnham Road into a purpose-built games studio with its own motion capture stage. The application says the new building would let the Guildford studio grow from 96 staff to more than 220.
Public comments close on Saturday 29 August. The council’s target date for a decision is 24 September.
The application, reference 26/P/01026, was validated on 30 July. It seeks full planning permission for the “retrofit and extension of existing office building, including external alterations, roof level plant and amenity terraces, cycle parking, landscaping, servicing, refuse storage and associated works”.
What is proposed
The site is the C-shaped 1990s office building wedged between the railway and Guildford Park Road, with Farnham Road to the south. Larian’s planning statement says the building has been vacant for a number of years and has not been maintained in that time.
The statement lists what the scheme would deliver:
- 888 sq m of extra office floorspace, taking the building from about 3,458 sq m to 4,346 sq m
- a two-storey motion capture volume, described as “the MOCAP”, filling in the central car park
- 558 sq m of external terraces and a roof garden for staff
- 36 cycle parking spaces and end-of-journey facilities for cyclists
- car parking cut from 26 spaces to 9, one of them an enlarged accessible bay
The design and access statement says the studio would include “flexible team working areas and an integrated motion capture and Audio studio facilities”. It describes the site as “a permanent, purpose built home” for Larian’s UK team.
Who Larian is, and why Guildford
Larian was founded in Ghent in 1996. Its design statement says the company employs over 550 people across studios in Guildford, Ghent, Dublin, Barcelona, Warsaw, Quebec and Kuala Lumpur. Baldur’s Gate 3 collected over 200 Game of the Year awards after its 2023 release, including the five major industry trophies.
In Guildford the company currently employs around 100 people split across two sites, Eastgate Court and the Midleton Industrial Estate. The design statement gives the studio’s current headcount as 96 in one place and 100 in another; both figures come from the same document.
The Midleton site is council-owned. In August 2024 the council’s Head of Asset Management approved a licence for Larian to fit out units 31 and 32 at Midleton Enterprise Park with a motion capture facility, including four control rooms and four motion capture rooms. The 1 Farnham Road scheme would bring that kind of facility into one building in the town centre.
Larian Studios UK Ltd was incorporated on 11 December 2020, according to Companies House, and is registered as a developer of interactive entertainment software.
A smaller scheme than the one already approved
This is the second planning application for the building in three years. The council granted permission on 23 April 2025, under reference 23/P/00764, for a retrofit and extension that would have added about two storeys. That permission is still live.
The officer’s report on that earlier scheme found “some adverse impacts to character” because the extension would have doubled the height of the existing building, though the benefits outweighed the harm. The new application avoids that argument. Its planning statement says the current proposals “are more modest than the previous application” and “would not increase the maximum height of the existing building”. The new terraces infill at the existing lower roofline.
The planning statement leans on the Local Plan’s employment policies. Policy E1 sets a target of 4,100 additional jobs across the borough between 2015 and 2034, and Policy E2 directs new office floorspace to the town centre first.
What consultees have said so far
Network Rail responded on 19 August. Its letter does not object but asks Larian to engage its Asset Protection and Optimisation team before any works begin, because the site sits hard against the operational railway. It says the developer “may be required to enter into an Asset Protection Agreement”.
No other consultee responses or public comments were published on the portal when we checked on 26 August. Fifty-four documents are on file.
What it means for you
- If you want to comment, do it by Saturday 29 August. Comments go through the application page on the council’s planning portal. The consultation expiry, site notice expiry and neighbour notification expiry all fall on the same day.
- Neighbouring households were notified on 5 August, according to the portal’s dates tab. The scheme’s daylight, noise and air quality reports are all on the portal.
- Drivers: with car parking cut from 26 to 9 spaces, Larian’s transport statement relies on the station next door and on cycling. Anyone parking on the surrounding streets will want to read the travel plan.
- The decision is due by 24 September. The portal lists no committee date yet. Guildford’s Planning Committee meets on 1 October and 21 October if the application is called in.
The application will be decided by Guildford Borough Council, which is abolished on 1 April 2027 and replaced by the new West Surrey authority. Other applications open for comment are listed on our Guildford planning applications page.
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