When you look at a bus stop, what do you see?

In the days of the Soviet Union, most details of life were governed by directives from Moscow, leaving little room for freedom of choice. Sorry, this audio has expired Soviet design history in 500 bus stops

But architects from various Soviet republics found a small place to express their individuality — in the design of bus stops.

Peter Ortner, a German photographer, spent years collecting photos of these bus stops for his book Back in the USSR: Soviet Roadside Architecture from Samarkand to Yerevan.

A bus stop in Armenia, at the banks of Sawan Lake. ( Supplied: Peter Ortner )

In an interview with Blueprint for Living, Ortner said he first noticed the bus stops while on holiday driving through a desert in Uzbekistan.

"It was just a building of two concrete blocks and one wall and I thought, that's very interesting, it's not merely a bus stop, it's an object of art," Ortner said.

"And as we drove on I saw another one and another one, and after two or three days I thought maybe this would be some project."

A bus stop in Georgia, on a deserted mountain road. ( Supplied: Peter Ortner )

Ortner went back and began photographing as many of them as he could find, year after year.

"I wanted to make a complete series, so no preselection, just one bus stop after the another. Not the tallest, not the biggest, just bus stops as they are," he said.

"Then you can see differences in forms or decline. And so then I went on like a virtual trip along the silk road from Uzbekistan, Central Asia, to the middle of Europe."

Ortner collected more than 700 photos of bus stops, which he had to whittle down to a selection of just 120 for the final version of the book.

A bus stop in Georgia, on the highway from Tiflis. ( Supplied: Peter Ortner )

"They have many different styles of building — like concretism, historicism, maybe even Bauhaus with those white lines," Ortner said.

"But they also have local styles like Islamic architecture ... that coming together with the decline and corrosion makes a very different picture of bus stops."

Because designs for bus stops were not standardised, the architects were able to freely express themselves and refer to local history and art, rather than to Russian history and art.

A bus stop in Azerbaijan, south of Baku, near the border with Iran. ( Supplied: Peter Ortner )

Despite being consumed by the Soviet Union, each republic saw its local personality materialise.

"In Uzbekistan they had some Uzbek-style and in Azerbaijan they had their own style. They did it their own way," Ortner said.

And rather than becoming forgotten in time, the bus stops have continued to change.

A bus stop in Crimea with its sign changed by local artists to say "New York". ( Supplied: Peter Ortner )

"There are some artists who are changing these bus stops and so individuality is still here today," Ortner said.

"At one bus stop in the Crimean peninsula, some artist just changed the name of the station, and wrote on the top 'New York'.

"I think that's great. Some place faraway, some utopia, some dream, but it's definitely not New York."