The essay focuses on the way Leon Battista Alberti conceptualized the architectural project by investigating all the aspects of his work from theory to practice. The article attempts a global reading of the Albertian project giving emphasis on its social and political context. The main argument is that Battista not only defined the philosophical and moral basis of the architectural profession as we know it, but he also contributed to hypostatize the division of knowledge already embedded in the very idea of architecture since antiquity.