Abstract: Decentralized control method for large-scale structures is studied. The concept of fully decentralized control, partially independent and overlapping decentralized control is introduced. Subsystem controller is designed by different optimization targets (local and global optimization), and the PSO-DE-based hybrid algorithm is employed to obtain the optimal weight matrices in this study. Considering the number of subsystem, the DOFS of subsystem and the floors of the overlapping sections, the ASCE 9-story benchmark building is selected as an example to evaluate the control performances among different conditions. Numerical simulation results indicate that the overlapping decentralized control can reduce structural vibration as effectively well as the traditional centralized control, but is more reliable and does not require additional control energy compared with the traditional one.