Ianto Evans is a Welsh-American applied ecologist, landscape architect, inventor, writer, social critic, and teacher.[1] He is known for his work building, writing and teaching about natural building, cob and high-efficiency solid-fuel stoves, ovens and heaters.
Originally from Wales, Evans attended architecture school in the 1960s.[2] With Linda Smiley, Evans built what may have been the first cob house in North America after researching cob structures in the British Isles.[3] They moved into the cottage in 1989. They joined with Michael Smith to establish the Cob Cottage Company in 1993.[4] They also founded the North American School of Natural Building and innovated a distinctive "Oregon Cob" method, hosting numerous workshops on the technique.[3][5][6]
Evans was director of Aprovecho's Fava Bean Project, in Cottage Grove, Oregon, where he worked to adapt fava beans to American climates.[7] As a permaculturalist, he developed a polyculture planting technique.[8] In the late 1970s, he invented the rocket mass heater.
In the 1970s, Evans worked in Guatemala and Costa Rica, developing the Lorena cook stove, an efficient contra-flow cooking stove made from the same materials as unfired brick (sand bound together by clay subsoil).
As a back-to-the-lander and natural builder, Evans is critical of industrial civilization, corporate media, technology, and modern construction methods.
Evans lives in the United States, near Coquille, Oregon.