We consider the problem of designing distributed controllers for a class of systems which can be obtained from the interconnection of a number of identical subsystems. If the state space matrices of these systems satisfy a certain structural property, then it is possible to derive a procedure for designing a distributed controller which has the same interconnection pattern as the plant. This procedure is basically a multiobjective optimization under Linear Matrix Inequality constraints, with system norms as performance indices. The explicit expressions for computing these controllers are given for both H-infinity or H-2 performance, and both for static state feedback and dynamic output feedback (in discrete time). At the end of the paper, two application examples illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.