We are a generation lacking in personal space. And as people not particularly comfortable in crowded places, we are constantly trying to negotiate for more of it. If we can’t find it physically, we tend to create our own hypothetical space and then criticize people for invading it, saying things like “Baby, I love you, but I really need my space” and “Honey, don’t bother me. I’m in a safe place right now.”

Today’s contemporary designers understand this compulsion. They believe it is a major reason why minimalistic culture has caught on. “People’s lives are already so complicated,” says designer Erik Newman of the Chicago-based EN100 Design Company. “They don’t need their furniture to be as well.”

At this year’s Chicago Design Show, held Thursday through Sunday at the Merchandise Mart, the focus is on sleek lines and compact spaces. The goal of the show, which in recent years has become less trade-oriented, is to inform consumers about the newest trends in contemporary design as well as play around with their imaginations for a while.

“We want to challenge the way people look at space,” says Megan Manion, marketing director for the show. “We want them to question their ideas of permanency. We want people to rethink what a structure is. Why do we need walls, for instance? Why do we need to have furniture drilled to the floor?”

The centerpiece of this weekend’s event is a structure called “CloudNine.” Designed by Chicago native Robert Bernstein, the structure, which he calls an “environment of suspended spaces,” is held up by thin translucent tensions. Because the supports are invisible and the cable support non-rigid, the structure seems to be floating in mid-air.

“I didn’t become an architect to design what I had already seen,” Bernstein says.

The difference between today’s designs and yesterday’s designs is that today’s tend to concentrate on negative spaces much more than positive ones. And while furniture of yesteryears was once noted for its mass, artistry and details, the mission of the designers today is to keep the designs sparse, sharp, clean and lightweight.

When Newman envisions his furniture, he says that the “No. 1 rule is that it not require two people to lift.” In fact, all of the designs Newman will display this weekend were able to fit quite comfortably in his trunk. He says Americans are so nomadic now that modular furniture has become almost a necessity.

“Furniture,” he says, “should be a tool for uncluttering and organizing your life, not making it messier.”

This idea is rather new-age. Designers at Flux in Milwaukee, where the average age of the 12-person design team is 26, do not even think of themselves as designers anymore. “What we do,” says Adam Meurer, Flux’s project office manager, “is play with space.”

Architects and building engineers come to Flux with building plans, and the team sketches possible scenarios and layouts for them. They envision the room before they design the furniture.

This is a reversal from previous decades. Designers used to design first for themselves, then “hoped that other people would see the same value,” says Jeff Golfman of Pulse, a family-owned and -operated furniture manufacturer.

Now, however, the industry is becoming much more consumer-oriented, and the opposite tends to be true.

Jagoli, the team that designed most of the furniture for the Chicago edition of “The Real World,” says developing that assignment was an interactive process. The producers of the show came to the Jagoli designers, showed them the space they would be occupying and told them the general theme the apartment should follow. The designers then came up with a bunch of different sketches that the producers either approved or discarded. Jagoli’s acceptance of the producers’ large role in the design process was a major reason why the firm was chosen to design the furniture and layout, says Daniel Garcia, part-owner of and designer for Jagoli. “That,” says Garcia, “and our quickness.”

Quickness is normally not an attribute connected with furniture design. Golfman, a longtime participant in the Design Show, describes the process as long, hard and exhausting.

“I spend months coming up with an idea. I’ll sit with my girlfriends and family and ask them what materials they like now, what colors make them feel good, what they look for in their clothing,” Golfman says. “I’ll incorporate all this into my designs and then present it to the production and finance departments. Their first reaction, always, is to tell me that I’m crazy, that nobody would ever buy that. They tell me I obviously have no idea what I’m talking about. As the months go by, however, they begin to think, ‘OK, maybe the idea isn’t so terrible.’ And then a few months later, my idea suddenly becomes everyone else’s as well.

“The funny thing,” he says, “is that it’s always the stuff that nobody think will sell that sells the most.”

Manion likes to say that today’s futuristic designs will become tomorrow’s classics. As proof, she points out that the winners of the 2001 Future Furniture Design competition — designers of America’s first “pocket chair,”a plastic chair that functions as both a seat and a magazine rack — is now widely distributed.

But considering some of the other designs in the show — a couch with half the back cut out and a couple of chairs without legs– this adage probably doesn’t always ring true. nyou