How to make a shell?

Question

How does one make a shell ?
-That can run console applications like FAR Manager with the colors and all...
Redirecting the console output doesn't seem to be enough.
-PowerShell does seem to do it without using cmd.exe.

The end game would be to create a graphical shell (not using the default console).
So from what I gathered, I would need to not only retrieve the console IO but intercept the calls to the Win32Api about console (like WriteConsoleOutput, SetConsoleCursorPosition, ...)