In this paper, we address the problem of optimal design for elastic mesh structures, with a specific focus on vascular stents. The stent struts are modeled using a one-dimensional curved rod model. At the junctions where stent struts meet, we impose continuity of displacements, continuity of infinitesimal rotations, and the equilibrium of contact forces and of contact couples. In the optimization problem we aim to minimize a cost function, defined as the \(L^2\) norm of the difference between the equilibrium displacement \({\boldsymbol{u}}\) of the stent under given loads and a target function \({\boldsymbol{u}}_0\) . The optimization parameters are the positions of vertices in the mesh. The structure of the one-dimensional elastic mesh model allows the efficient computation of the cost function’s derivative, enabling an effective implementation of the gradient descent method. We motivate our research with practical applications and present two numerical examples to demonstrate the approach.