One thing always strikes me in terms of design when I'm in Latvia (USSR republic in 1940 and 1945-1990). It is how modular, repairable, and in that way "simple" things that have survived from the Soviet era look. Ingeniously built wooden ironing boards for example, the older generations of trams of Riga, the "Minsk" folding bicycles that you still see around very often, the trains (no new ones since 1991!), even many of the "Chrushchovkas" appartment blocks...