and historians have questioned Aalto's influence on the historical canon. The Italian Marxist architecture historians Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co contend that Aalto's "historical significance has perhaps been rather exaggerated; with Aalto we are outside of the great themes that have made the course of contemporary architecture so dramatic. The qualities of his works have a meaning only as masterful distractions, not subject to reproduction outside the remote reality [sic] in which they have their roots." At the heart of their critique was the perception of Aalto's work as unsuited to the urban context: "Essentially, his architecture is not appropriate to urban typologies." At the other end of the political spectrum (though similarly concerned with the appropriateness of Aalto's formal language), the American cultural theorist and architectural historian Charles Jencks singled out his Pensions Institute as an example of what he termed the architect's "soft paternalism": "Conceived as a fragmented mass to break up the feeling of bureaucracy, it succeeds all too well in being humane and killing the pensioner with kindness. The forms are familiar – red brick and ribbon-strip windows broken by copper and bronze elements – all carried through with a literal-mindedness that borders on the soporific." During his lifetime, Aalto faced criticisms from his fellow architects in Finland, most notably Kirmo Mikkola and Juhani Pallasmaa. By the last decade of Aalto's life, his work was seen as unfashionably individualistic at a time when the opposing tendencies of rationalism and constructivism – often championed under left-wing politics – argued for anonymous, aggressively non-aesthetic architecture. Of Aalto's late works, Mikkola wrote, "Aalto has moved to [a] baroque line..." Memorials Aalto has been commemorated in a number of ways: Alvar Aalto is the eponym of the Alvar Aalto Medal, now considered one of world architecture's most prestigious awards. Aalto was featured in the 50 mk note in the last series of the Finnish markka (before its replacement by the Euro in 2002). The centenary of Aalto's birth in 1998 was marked in Finland not only by several books and exhibitions, but also by the promotion of specially bottled red and white Aalto Wine and a specially designed cupcake. In 1976, the year of his death, Aalto was commemorated on a Finnish postage stamp. Piazza Alvar Aalto, a square named after Aalto, can be found in the Porta Nuova business district of Milan, Italy. Aalto University, a Finnish university