His Metropole Hotel, whose interior fittings still feature a Sassoon family emblem with its two greyhounds, rises at a nearby intersection -- across from its twin, Hamilton House, built by Sir Victor as a hybrid office building and high-rise apartment house.

WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand

In the end, Mr. Carr says, his firm hopes to create an interior that harkens back to the hotel's Deco roots, but is chic and trendy enough to draw today's customers.

WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand

It was designed by Singaporean firm Chan Sau Yan Associates, which helmed the interior design of the four-star hotel.

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An Iraqi journalist was also among those killed in Monday's Mansour Hotel blast, which wounded 21, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

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Interestingly, several of the rooms are partly or unfurnished, giving guests the liberty to create their own interior or have it furnished by the hotel's designer.

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The early influence of French Art Deco aesthetics can be seen in the stained-glass ceiling of the ballroom in the otherwise largely Beaux Arts-style old French Sports Club -- now the Okura Garden Hotel -- as well as in some other interior flourishes.

WSJ: Touring Asia's Art Deco Gems in Shanghai and Napier, New Zealand

Their interior design collaboration with India Mahdavi for Paris's Thoumieux hotel and its two restaurants also started with a typeface, which then grew into a motif that showed up in furniture, lighting and brass hardware.

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Another rocket-propelled grenade whistled past the hotel and other rockets exploded near the U.N. compound, the Iraqi Interior Ministry and an abandoned police station.

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