In this paper we present a set of projection-based designs for constructing simplified linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controllers for large-scale network systems. When such systems have tens of thousands of states, the design of conventional LQR controllers becomes numerically challenging, and their implementation requires a large number of communication links. Our proposed algorithms bypass these difficulties by clustering the system states using structural properties of its closed-loop transfer matrix. The assignment of clusters is defined through a structured projection matrix P , which leads to a significantly lower-dimensional LQR design. The reduced-order controller is finally projected back to the original coordinates via an inverse projection. The problem is, therefore, posed as a model matching problem of finding the optimal set of clusters or P that minimizes the H2-norm of the error between the transfer matrix of the full-order network with the full-order LQR and that with the projected LQR. We derive a tractable relaxation for this model matching problem, and design a P that solves the relaxation. The design is shown to be implementable by a convenient, hierarchical two-layer control architecture, requiring far less number of communication links than full-order LQR.Index Terms-Clustering, Large-scale networks, Projection, LQR, H2 performance.2) Reduced-order LQR design: We similarly project the LQR parameters byQ = P QP T ∈ R r×r , and letR = R such thatG :=BR −1B = P GP T ∈ R r×r . An LQR problem for the reduced-order model (6) is then posed as to minimizẽ J := ∞ 0