In this contribution, we focus on space–time approaches for analyzing the behavior of beam structures subjected to harmonic excitations or impact loads. A particular application of interest is the parametric optimization of lattice materials produced by additive manufacturing. For such applications, a space–time formulation can offer advantages over standard methods, as the additional temporal information helps define optimization constraints along the entire loading path independently of the time discretization. For the beam formulation, we employ the Timoshenko beam theory in the linear case and a von Kármán model for nonlinear situations. Regarding the space–time formulation, our work builds upon the developments presented in \cite{Saade} for both linear and nonlinear elastodynamics, which we extend to beam theories. In particular, we adopt a mixed displacement–velocity approach augmented with stabilization terms ensuring Galerkin acceleration consistency, expressed as least-squares terms. These additions effectively suppress spurious oscillations that may arise in impact problems, particularly those linked to high-frequency artificial modes while ensuring very limited artificial numerical dissipation. Through elementary examples, we discuss the performance of both time-continuous and time-discontinuous Galerkin formulations. We also present results on lattice structures, comparing the proposed space–time approach with standard finite element models using a semi-discrete time scheme (Newmark-type algorithm). The lattice models are constructed within a multi-patch framework, and we demonstrate that Nitsche’s method for enforcing constraints between patches is particularly well-suited to this context.