The aim of this work is to examine pre-architects' use of metaphorical reasoning as a tool for design problem solving exercises in an unfamiliar environment. It is to improve their sense of place, which helps to identify and capture design concepts, as well as define goals and requirements. Regarding the three metaphorical reasoning operations of Welling (analogy, combination and metaphor), a conceptual structure is formulated and context relation is discussed in the paper. In this context, for the studio education, fifteen students have been taken to Milan to clarify the experience of them at the shallowest level of insideness as an authentic sense of place and they have been asked to design a performance center, for any kind of activity that impressed them and to also provide for something lacking in the city. According to the student projects, authentic sense of place was high with the context related metaphorical approaches. Above all, it was even higher when both within domain-deep structures/metaphorical approaches were combined with the within domain- surface features/analogical approaches. The structural expression was in the foreground, however, when a student created his/her own context which was realized with the expressive use of technology and inventive forms. In that case the user is sensitive to space not to seek the meaning of it for those who live there but seeks the meaning desired to be experienced by the designer of the excellent technological expressions. The contextual architecture is contextualized in that sense, but our role as educators should be to teach our students the union of these two.