Auxetic structures exhibit a negative Poisson’s ratio and therefore expand laterally when subjected to tensile loading. This unusual deformation behavior leads to advantageous mechanical properties such as enhanced energy absorption, increased impact resistance, and improved robustness, making auxetic systems attractive for applications in medicine, aerospace, and defense. Beyond these material advantages, auxetic structures share important conceptual similarities with compliant mechanisms. In contrast to conventional kinematic systems, compliant mechanisms generate motion through elastic deformation rather than mechanical joints, which reduces system complexity, facilitates manufacturing, and improves structural durability. This close relationship enables the transfer of established design principles from compliant mechanism theory to the systematic development of advanced auxetic structures. Building on previous work on the optimization of mechanical metamaterials, this contribution presents a density-based topology optimization framework for the design of auxetic structures using compliant mechanism principles. The methodological basis is derived from earlier studies combining topology and shape optimization in a homogenization setting for piezoelectric metamaterials. In the present work, this framework is adapted to generate auxetic microstructures with selected deformation responses under prescribed loading conditions. The proposed approach is demonstrated on unit cell benchmark problems, which serve to illustrate the capabilities of the method and provide a foundation for future extensions towards more advanced material models or the inclusion of local stress constraints.