The management of research-oriented learning environments has become a central question in higher education, particularly in fields where knowledge is produced not only through text-based scholarship but also through iterative making, visual reasoning, and project-based experimentation. This study examines how the Design Studio may be organized, evaluated, and governed as a research infrastructure rather than treated solely as a pedagogical setting. Using qualitative documentary analysis of a focal architectural research article and its five embedded project exemplars, the paper codes explicit claims about studio-based inquiry, checks the stability of the resulting categories across the exemplars, and translates those categories into the Studio Planning and Research Governance Framework (SPRGF). The analysis indicates that a research-capable studio is characterized by eight interdependent features: integration of teaching and research, iterative project sequencing, interdisciplinary coordination, technical experimentation, knowledge codification, civic engagement, alignment across personal and societal relevance, and the fusion of practice with inquiry. Within the limits of a single-case documentary design, the paper shows how these features can be used to plan studio briefs, assign staffing, structure assessment, and document research value at course, program, and institutional levels. By repositioning the Design Studio as a governable knowledge-production unit, the study contributes a transparent planning framework for management and planning research in higher education and offers a defensible basis for evaluating design-led project environments without reducing them to criteria external to their disciplinary logic.