News: architecture writer and founder of BLDGBLOG Geoff Manaugh has been announced as the new editor-in-chief of technology website Gizmodo.

The appointment comes as Gizmodo moves to broaden its focus from gadgets and digital technology towards architecture, urbanism and design.

Under Manaugh's editorship, which begins in September, Gizmodo will look beyond the traditional definition of technology to analyse its place in the wider world, he told the New York Times.

"We want to push what technology means. It’s not just about gadgets you carry around in your pocket," he said. "The city itself is the largest gadget that humans have made. You can talk about the ways cities are managed, the way governments function."

The website will also move away from reviews of consumer gadgets, he said.

"That coverage is being done by so many people today. The idea will be to talk more about the culture of that technology."

"We'll also be spinning off the more gossipy stuff about Silicon Valley to another blog, Valleywag," he added.

Manaugh made his name as a leading architecture blogger with BLDGBLOG, the website he founded nine years ago as a home for his writing on the built environment.

He was previously senior editor at Dwell and contributing editor at Wired UK, and has also taught at the architecture school of Columbia University in New York.

Gizmodo has also named Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan as its new design editor and brought retrofuturist Matt Novak on board, whose Paleofuture blog "looks into the future that never was".

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