First used a similar design on an internal project a couple of years ago. I wrote a long comment on here a while ago that got a good response. This is what most people are referring to when they talk about 'single page webapp', which needs a better acronym, like Ajax
'Single page web app' makes me think of hash tag routing. I think Static+API or S+API (whatever) is like a typical web site with multiple pages. Whats unique is the layout and content are requested separately.