This paper presents a systematic approach to the synthesis of simply structured controllersfor large scale parameter varying distributed systems. The design and optimizationprocedure consists of two loops. In an inner loop, an efficient LMI-based optimizationalgorithm is used to evaluate the closed-loop performance. The outer loop uses evolutionaryoperators to iteratively search for the parameters of a controller network that achieves thebest performance.For the purpose of performance evaluation, new sufficient LMI conditions are presented tofind the induced norm of such systems. The conservatism of the analysis is reduced by the use ofparameter dependent Lyapunov functions and by taking bounds on the parameter variationrates into account. Since the control algorithms are implemented on digital computers, theresults are presented for discrete time and discrete space systems. The problem posed inthis form is infinite dimensional, a gridding algorithm is also proposed to convert it into afinite dimensional problem.The approach is illustrated with two applications: active vibration control of a cantilever,and position control of a seismic cable. These examples illustrate that the performanceanalysis condition presented here is less conservative than previously presented LMIconditions. It is also demonstrated that the approach can be used to systematically designsimply structured low-order controllers, while satisfying all performance requirements.