Tokyo says goodbye to an ultra-modern architectural marvel

The farewell salute went on for months: Locals and visitors aiming their cameras across a busy freeway for a last shot of Tokyo's Nakagin Tower. "My hotel just happens to be around the corner, so I thought I'd make a pilgrimage before it totally disappears," said Nick Lockley, who was in the neighborhood on a business trip.

Nakagin Tower is actually 140 stacked pods, or capsules, in the heart of downtown. Completed in 1972, they were marketed as stripped-down urban retreats.

This capsule sits in the grounds of the Saitama Museum of Modern Art, which itself was designed by the same architect, Kisho Kurokawa, a pioneer of modular architecture, like the Beautillion at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair. Kurokawa imagined Nakagin's capsules as cells with a finite lifespan, a style that he called Metabolism.