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Amnesty International is today launching its first-ever ‘concept shopping emporium’ in London’s Boxpark shipping-container department store in Shoreditch, writes Steve Mullins. Throughout 2012 Amnesty Shop @ BOXPARK will be the exclusive stockist of a brand new collection produced for Amnesty by the CultureLabel.

Forget Santa, Lady Gaga is coming to town. To New York City. To Barneys. Gaga’s Workshop will kick off 21 November and include a Gaga-esque retail environment, holiday windows, a dedicated Gaga interactive website, and limited-edition products created by Lady Gaga with Nicola Formichetti and artists Eli Sudbrack and Christophe Hamaide Pierson of avaf.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is coming to Berlin. Already up and running in New York, the Lab will be open for business in the German capital from end-May – running to end-July – becoming the second stop in the Lab’s planned nine-city tour, writes Steve Mullins.

London is set to get an Ikea city when the Strand East project goes up next to the new Olympic Park. Inter Ikea, the investment arm of the furniture brand, will build a 1,200-unit development which will feature a 350-bedroom hotel and thousands of square feet of office space, as well as residential homes.

Smile, because January, the bleakest month of the year, is almost upon us. You see, Smile For London is inviting the UK capital’s poets to help uplift commuters in January 2012 with selected prose and poetry transformed by artists into 20-second typographic films. These Word In Motion clips will be screened on London Underground platform screens for two weeks starting on the 16th of that – usually – miserable month.

Iceland’s president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson is inviting tourists into his home, and is asking his fellow citizens to follow suit in a campaign developed with agency The Brooklyn Brothers to ramp up visitor numbers, writes Maria Stadtmueller.

Fashion brand Guess has partnered with GQ magazine to develop a mini-series featuring hip hop artist Theophilus London, says Steve Mullins.

Guess is hosting the exclusive five-part series on its Facebook page, with initial clips showing the artist speaking about his indie hip hop style music and fashion inspirations. The final two videos will highlight a day in the life of London.

Facebook is cooking, which is why UK kitchen brand Belling is collecting the profile pictures of its Facebook fans and producing a montage for printing onto a Belling Classic cooker.