The Unsung Hero Book Prize at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) celebrates twenty years of students whose everyday actions quietly—but powerfully—shape the life of the School. These students strengthen the GSD through acts of mentorship, altruism, and care. Each year, students, faculty, staff, and alumni convene in Piper Auditorium to recognize a small group of students whose selfless efforts enrich the GSD and its community.
Administered annually by the Development and Alumni Relations Office in collaboration with the Frances Loeb Library, the prize is awarded by a jury comprised of library staff and GSD Alumni Council members who review nominations, select the winners, and invite each recipient to choose a book of personal significance. That volume is then specially plated and added to the Loeb Library’s stacks in the student’s honor.
Over two decades, these chosen titles have formed a quiet, cumulative archive of student impact within the library’s collections that is accessible to generations of readers. A second copy is gifted to each awardee as a symbol of the connection between their experience and the School’s intellectual life.
These students’ generosity and willingness to stand up for others, reflecting a deep dedication to the GSD community, emerged across the nominations. The prize honors this often-unseen work, celebrates students who help cultivate a fairer, more inclusive School, and reinforces the GSD’s commitment to community, equity, and ethical responsibility. By recognizing students whose contributions emerge in everyday life, the prize affirms a vision of design leadership rooted in encouragement, care, and a shared responsibility for shaping community through positive action.
The Unsung Heroes Prize is one that is dedicated just to students who do many meaningful things during their everyday lives at the GSD. Students share of themselves, their knowledge, expertise, and kindness.
Ann Whiteside, Librarian and Assistant Dean for Information Services
Genesis Solano (MArch ’26)
Alumni Council member and Unsung Hero Book Prize jury co-chair Nathalie Beauvais (MAUD ’92) presented Genesis Solano (MArch ’26) with an Unsung Hero Award in recognition of her quiet, deeply generous acts that make the GSD a better place. Genesis shares skills and methods that elevate her peers’ work and, through her role at the Frances Loeb Library, introduces fellow students to its collections and archival materials and helps them feel at home in the archive. Reflecting on this honor, she emphasized that “this award reflects the collective energy of individuals that, with their friendship and guidance, have made my time here meaningful and fulfilling,” noting that “a gesture of care happens in the middle of the night before a review, or in a simple note left on a desk.”
For her Unsung Hero book selection, Genesis chose AS in DS: An Eye on the Road, by Alison Smithson, a compilation of photographs, drawings, and annotations chronicling car trips from London to Fonthill, home to the Smithsons’ experimental Upper Lawn Solar Pavilion. Genesis is drawn to its “shaky black and white photos . . . fragmented text, loose sketches, nothing fancy, a bit intimate and all real.” In Smithson’s book, she sees mirrored her own quiet, often unnoticed experiences—those “cherished moments of mine here at the GSD.”
Kiki Cooper (MDes/MLAUD ’27)
Kiki Cooper (MDes/MLAUD ’27) is recognized for helping to cultivate a culture of mutual support and accountability at the GSD. While introducing Kiki at the ceremony, research and instruction librarian Kai Miyabayashi McGinn invoked the School’s evolving community, whose members have grounded and enriched the award selection process. She describes Kiki as someone whose impact extends beyond individual acts of kindness and whose dedication to their GSD peers uplifts the entire community. Peers echo this praise, citing Kiki’s sincerity and pivotal work on the Black in Design Conference. Kiki’s work on this conference, one of the GSD’s largest and most visible events with global speakers, exhibits, and workshops, was described by many as indispensable; in their words, the conference “could not have happened” without their work. In addition, Kiki’s peers also noted their everyday warm gestures of care that make others feel welcomed and seen.
Kiki, who considers themself to be rooted in lessons from their mother and grandmother, described a simple but profound wisdom: to treat others as you wish to be treated. “Everything you do should be a love letter to yourself and the communities that have sustained you,” they remind their peers.
Kiki selected Curating with Care, edited by Elke Krasny and Lara Perry, a collection that explores how care can reshape curatorial and cultural practices. The book includes a chapter co-written by Kiki and their arts collective, Bruxas Bruxas, which embodies how commitments to care and community have long guided their creative and intellectual work. Kiki describes this book as “pedagogically critical” contemporary literature, offering road maps toward a more just world through the lens of care.
Robin Albrecht (MArch ’26)
Beauvais introduced Robin Albrecht (MArch ’26), nominated by his peers for his quiet leadership that helps his community thrive and allows others to shine. She highlighted his contributions as a teaching assistant and teaching fellow, his work editing his classmates’ projects, and his active engagement with GSD alumni in Hong Kong. Albrecht, she said, embodies what the GSD looks for “through the lens of design . . . Robin’s achievements are defined by consistency, initiative, and care for others. He strengthens communities by connecting people, supporting collective work, and stepping in wherever needed.”
Albrecht’s experience as a student in “Bookmaking,” a GSD course taught in spring 2023 by Amsterdam-based graphic designer and bookmaker Irma Boom, Phillip Denny, and Rem Koolhaas, led him to select Boom’s release, Book Activist (June 2026), for his Unsung Hero recognition. Reflecting on his choice, Albrecht said he is excited by gathering knowledge and contributions from many different people and shaping them into something that communicates ideas.
The “Bookmaking” course culminated in the exhibition The Book in the Age of . . ., which presented outcomes from an intensive research seminar on the history and future of the book. Over the semester, students assembled a collective history of the book. They developed a dozen original conjectures for its future evolution, transforming the Loeb Library gallery into a space for critical reflection on the pressing question: what is the book in the age of globalization?
Ryota Sunakawa MLA ’26
Ryota Sunakawa (MLA ’26) was awarded an Unsung Hero Book Prize for his quiet, steady leadership, humility, and kindness. Alumni Council member and Unsung Hero Book Prize jury co-chair Rob Rogers (MDes ’89) notes that Ryota’s peers describe him as “consistently present, dependable, and proactive” in his roles as a TA and RA—ambitious and disciplined without seeking attention or recognition. Instead, he focuses on doing meaningful work and supporting others along the way. Known for his calm presence in stressful moments and his readiness to help, Ryota exemplifies the kind of character that, as Rogers observes, “really merits our recognition.”
For his Unsung Hero selection, Ryota chose Panorama World: From Life-Size to the Earth, a catalog from an exhibition on Takamasa Yosizaka, a Japanese architect, urban designer, and planner. Ryota reveres Yosizaka for his approach to landscape architecture and aspires to “draw like him, make models like him, create space like him”—work that, for Ryota, captures a deep love of humanity and a sense of wonder toward even the smallest natural phenomena. He finds the catalog, which documents the wide-ranging world of Yosizaka, his lab, and his office, to be a source of continual discovery and encouragement: “Every time I flip through his work, I find something new.”
At the GSD, small, everyday acts of kindness that grow out of collaboration are seen and valued for nurturing a culture of conviviality, encouragement, and design excellence.
